Neuropathological injury severity score correlates with MRI tissue microstructure in human post-mortem traumatic cervical spinal cord injury

Motivation: Knowing how well diffusion MRI metrics reflect tissue injury in spinal cord injury (SCI) will help evaluate the feasibility of using MRI as a proxy for histological-confirmed microstructural damage. Goal(s): To determine the relationship between histologically determined neuropathological injury severity scores and diffusion tensor imaging and ActiveAx metrics in post-mortem SCI tissue. Approach: We compared 7T diffusion MRI metrics to neuropathological scores using human post-mortem spinal cord samples. Results: Correlations between diffusion MRI metrics and neuropathological severity scores indicated that different diffusion metrics may have different sensitivities to degree of tissue damage in SCI. Impact: A multi-metric diffusion MRI approach can probe different aspects of microstructural damage in spinal cord injury. In-vivo assessment of spinal cord injury pathology using diffusion MRI could allow for improved clinical decision making.