Spinal cord blood flow measurement by arterial spin labeling

The assessment of spinal cord (SC) hemodynamics, and especially SC blood flow (SCBF), plays a key role in the pathophysiological description and understanding of many SC diseases such as ischemia, or spinal cord injury. SCBF has been previously measured in animals with invasive techniques such as autoradiography or labeled microspheres; no MR technique, however, has been proposed so far. The possibility of quantitatively measuring SCBF in mice using MRI was investigated using a presaturated FAIR (flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery) arterial spin labeling (ASL) technique. SCBF measurements were performed at the cervical level of the mouse as well as on the brain so as to use cerebral blood flow (CBF) values as internal references. With a spatial resolution of 133 x 133 mu m(2) for the SCBF maps, absolute regional perfusion values could be measured within the different structures of the SC (gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid area). Similar perfusion values were found in SC gray matter (330 +/- 90 mL/100g/min) and in brain (295 +/- 22 mL/100g/min for thalamus). This result, in agreement with SCBF/CBF measurements performed with non-MR techniques, opens new perspectives for noninvasive longitudinal and in vivo animal studies. Application to human experiments may also be possible.