Nuclear magnetic resonance microimaging of mouse spinal cord in vivo.

The spinal cord is the site of traumatic injuries, the devastating consequences of which constitute a public health problem in our societies. So far, there is no efficient repair therapeutic approach, and this is mainly due to the great difficulty for elaborating predictive experimental models of this pathology. Up to now, most pathophysiological studies were based on postmortem evaluation of the quantity and extent of the lesions, and their comparison in-between human and rodent specimen. Recent progresses of magnetic resonance imaging provide new tools to examine in vivo rodent central nervous system, and eventually to monitor the progression of lesions. However, up to now, mice spinal cord has been inaccessible to such studies, due to specific physiological characteristics and to the small size of the cord. In this study, the first diffusion-weighted images depicting the mouse thoracic spinal cord in vivo are shown. Motion-related artifacts are significantly reduced by respiratory gating using a dedicated sensor. By changing the direction of diffusion-sensitizing gradients, different contrasts were obtained that are compared with ex vivo MRI and histological preparations. In addition, preliminary results obtained on pathological cords are presented.