Feasibility of MUSE DTI in differentiation of spinal cord injury severity in cervical spondylotic myelopathy

MUSE (Multiplexed Sensitivity-Encoding) is a novel diffusion weighted imaging with 2 to 3-excitations, phase acquisition step reduction, to achieve high-resolution diffusion imaging, higher signal-to-noise ratio, fewer motion artifacts and magnetic field inhomogeneities. In this study, we applied MUSE-based diffusion tensor imaging to investigate the compression-caused microstructure changes in the spinal cord of each subject. Our results suggested that MUSE-DTI computed parameters (Trace, FA, ADC) have dependable diagnostic values in detecting CSM (cervical spondylotic myelopathy) and that the ADC value is the best indicator of spinal cord compression.