Application value of diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) in evaluating microstructural changes in the spinal cord of patients with early cervical spondylotic myelopathy.

Objective: To investigate the application value of diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) in evaluating microstructural changes in the spinal cord of patients with early cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM).

Methods: Twenty-five patients with early clinical stage CSM and twenty-five healthy controls underwent 3.0T MR scans with conventional MRI sequences and DKI with echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence. DKI metrics such as fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), and mean diffusional kurtosis (MK) values were calculated separately for white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM).

Results: MK of the WM and GM were significantly higher in patients with early CSM than in healthy controls (P<0.005).

Conclusions: MK can reflect microstructural changes of white matter and gray matter of spinal cord in patients with early CSM and has the potential to provide new information prior to conventional diffusion metrics such as MD and FA.