scholarly journals Water diffusion anisotropy in white and gray matter of the human spinal cord

2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Rossi ◽  
Andreas Boss ◽  
Günter Steidle ◽  
Petros Martirosian ◽  
Uwe Klose ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
Water Diffusion ◽  
Diffusion Anisotropy ◽  
Human Spinal Cord

scholarly journals Vascular mechanisms in the pathophysiology of human spinal cord injury

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. E2
Author(s):  
Charles H. Tator ◽  
Izumi Koyanagi
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Spinal Cord Injury ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
White Matter Lesions ◽  
Arterial System ◽  
Secondary Injury ◽  
Human Spinal Cord ◽  
Injury Mechanisms ◽  
Cord Injury

Vascular injury plays an important role in the primary and secondary injury mechanisms that cause damage to the acutely traumatized spinal cord. To understand the pathophysiology of human spinal cord injury, the authors investigated the vascular system in three uninjured human spinal cords using silicone rubber microangiography and analyzed the histological findings related to vascular injury in nine acutely traumatized human spinal cords obtained at autopsy. The interval from spinal cord injury to death ranged from 20 minutes to 9 months. The microangiograms of the uninjured human cervical cords demonstrated new information about the sulcal arterial system and the pial arteries. The centrifugal sulcal arterial system was found to supply all of the anterior gray matter, the anterior half of the posterior gray matter, approximately the inner half of the anterior and lateral white columns, and the anterior half of the posterior white columns. Traumatized spinal cord specimens in the acute stage (3-5 days postinjury) showed severe hemorrhages predominantly in the gray matter, but also in the white matter. The white matter surrounding the hemorrhagic gray matter showed a variety of lesions, including decreased staining, disrupted myelin, and axonal and periaxonal swelling. The white matter lesions extended far from the injury site, especially in the posterior columns. There was no evidence of complete occlusion of any of the larger arteries, including the anterior and posterior spinal arteries and the sulcal arteries. However, occluded intramedullary veins were identified in the degenerated posterior white columns. In the chronic stage (3-9 months postinjury), the injured segments showed major tissue loss with large cavitations, whereas both rostral and caudal remote sites showed well-demarcated necrotic areas indicative of infarction mainly in the posterior white columns. Obstruction of small intramedullary arteries and veins by the initial mechanical stress or secondary injury mechanisms most likely produced these extensive white matter lesions. Our studies implicate damage to the anterior sulcal arteries in causing the hemorrhagic necrosis and subsequent central myelomalacia at the injury site in acute spinal cord injury in humans.

scholarly journals FETAL ANATOMY OF THE HUMAN SPINAL CORD

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
V. Shkolnikov
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Glial Cells ◽  
Motor Neurons ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
The Body ◽  
Diagnostic Methods ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Intrauterine Development ◽  
Human Spinal Cord

Due to the development and improvement of medical technologies and diagnostic methods, in recent years, the interest of neuromorphologists, neuropathologists, neurosurgeons and reproductive specialists in the histogenesis of the structures of the central nervous system, in particular, the spinal cord, has increased. In the process of macro- and microscopic examination of the spinal cord of human fetuses of 20-21 weeks of intrauterine development, the topography of the thickenings in relation to the parts of the spinal column was established according to our own method, the morphometric parameters of the structures of the spinal cord segments and the regularities of cytoarchitectonics were determined. In 20-21 week old fetuses, the ratio of the length of the spine to the parietococcygeal length of the fetus is 65.0%, and the ratio of the length of the spinal cord to the parietococcygeal length of the fetus is 54.0 %. The border between the cervical and thoracic spine is projected onto a conditional line that connects the spine of the scapula. The border between the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spine is the line between the upper three quarters and the lower one quarter of the body length. The border between the lumbar and sacral parts runs along a conventionally drawn line that connects the posterior lower iliac spines, and the border of the transition of the sacral to the coccygeal is the level of the lower third of the gluteal region. The structure of the gray matter of the spinal cord segments in this age period corresponds to that in people of mature age – the presence of anterior, lateral and posterior horns. A large area of gray matter is observed in the cervical and lumbar segments, a smaller area in the thoracic and sacral segments. The structuredness of the white matter of the spinal cord segments in this age period corresponds to that in adults – the presence of anterior, lateral and posterior cords. The cervical and lumbar segments have a large area of white matter, and in magnitude they are the same. The nuclei of radial glial cells are relatively equal in size in all segments. The thickness of the matrix layer varies throughout the entire spinal cord, but reaches its greatest size in the ventral parts. The sizes of the nuclei of neuroblasts also fluctuate: the nuclei of motor neurons have large sizes, and the smaller ones are inserted and vegetative. The nuclei of glial cells have relatively identical sizes of different segments of the spinal cord, but 2-3 times less than the nuclei of neuroblasts.

Vascular mechanisms in the pathophysiology of human spinal cord injury

1997 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Tator ◽  
Izumi Koyanagi
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Spinal Cord Injury ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
White Matter Lesions ◽  
Arterial System ◽  
Secondary Injury ◽  
Human Spinal Cord ◽  
Injury Mechanisms ◽  
Cord Injury

✓ Vascular injury plays an important role in the primary and secondary injury mechanisms that cause damage to the acutely traumatized spinal cord. To understand the pathophysiology of human spinal cord injury, the authors investigated the vascular system in three uninjured human spinal cords using silicone rubber microangiography and analyzed the histological findings related to vascular injury in nine acutely traumatized human spinal cords obtained at autopsy. The interval from spinal cord injury to death ranged from 20 minutes to 9 months. The microangiograms of the uninjured human cervical cords demonstrated new information about the sulcal arterial system and the pial arteries. The centrifugal sulcal arterial system was found to supply all of the anterior gray matter, the anterior half of the posterior gray matter, approximately the inner half of the anterior and lateral white columns, and the anterior half of the posterior white columns. Traumatized spinal cord specimens in the acute stage (3–5 days postinjury) showed severe hemorrhages predominantly in the gray matter, but also in the white matter. The white matter surrounding the hemorrhagic gray matter showed a variety of lesions, including decreased staining, disrupted myelin, and axonal and periaxonal swelling. The white matter lesions extended far from the injury site, especially in the posterior columns. There was no evidence of complete occlusion of any of the larger arteries, including the anterior and posterior spinal arteries and the sulcal arteries. However, occluded intramedullary veins were identified in the degenerated posterior white columns. In the chronic stage (3–9 months postinjury), the injured segments showed major tissue loss with large cavitations, whereas both rostral and caudal remote sites showed well-demarcated necrotic areas indicative of infarction mainly in the posterior white columns. Obstruction of small intramedullary arteries and veins by the initial mechanical stress or secondary injury mechanisms most likely produced these extensive white matter lesions. Our studies implicate damage to the anterior sulcal arteries in causing the hemorrhagic necrosis and subsequent central myelomalacia at the injury site in acute spinal cord injury in humans.

scholarly journals What are the gray and white matter volumes of the human spinal cord?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Henmar ◽  
Erik B. Simonsen ◽  
Rune W. Berg
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Human Spinal Cord ◽  
Matter Volume ◽  
Motor Activities

The gray matter of the spinal cord is the seat of somata of various types of neurons devoted to the sensory and motor activities of the limbs and trunk as well as a part of the autonomic nervous system. The volume of the spinal gray matter is an indicator of the local neuronal processing and this can decrease due to atrophy associated with degenerative diseases and injury. Nevertheless, the absolute volume of the human spinal cord has rarely been reported, if ever. Here, we use high–resolution magnetic resonance imaging, with a cross–sectional resolution of 50 × 50μm2 and a voxel size of 0.0005mm3, to estimate the total gray and white matter volume of a post mortem human female spinal cord. Segregation of gray and white matter was accomplished using deep learning image segmentation. Further, we include data from a male spinal cord of a previously published study. The gray and white matter volumes were found to be 2.87 and 11.33 ml, respectively for the female and 3.55 and 19.33 ml, respectively for a male. The gray and white matter profiles along the vertebral axis were found to be strikingly similar and the volumes of the cervical, thoracic and lumbosacral sections were almost equal.NEW AND NOTEWORTHYHere, we combine high field MRI (9.4T) and deep learning for a post-mortem reconstruction of the gray and white matter in human spinal cords. We report a minuscule total gray matter volume of 2.87 ml for a female and 3.55 ml for a male. For comparison, these volumes correspond approximately to the distal digit of the little finger.

scholarly journals Automated slice-specific z-shimming for fMRI of the human spinal cord

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merve Kaptan ◽  
S. Johanna Vannesjo ◽  
Toralf Mildner ◽  
Ulrike Horn ◽  
Ronald Hartley-Davies ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Magnetic Field ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Human Spinal Cord ◽  
Beneficial Effects ◽  
Spinal Fmri ◽  
Manual Selection ◽  
Selection Of

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the human spinal cord faces many challenges, one of which is signal loss due to local magnetic field inhomogeneities. This issue can be addressed with slice-specific z-shimming, which compensates for the dephasing effect of the inhomogeneities using a single, slice-specific gradient pulse. Since the original demonstration of its utility, this technique has already been employed in several spinal fMRI studies. Here, we aim to address two outstanding issues regarding this technique: on the one hand, we evaluate its effects on several parameters that are directly relevant for spinal fMRI (but have not yet been assessed) and on the other hand, we improve upon the manual selection of slice-specific z-shims by developing automated procedures. First, we demonstrate that the beneficial effects of z-shimming i) are apparent across a large range of echo times, ii) hold true for both the dorsal and ventral horn gray matter, and iii) are also clearly apparent in the temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR) of gradient-echo EPI time-series data. Second, and more importantly, we address the time-consuming and subjective nature of manual selection of slice-specific z-shims by developing two automated approaches: one is based on finding the z-shim that maximizes spinal cord signal intensity in each slice of an EPI z-shim reference-scan and the other is based on finding the strength of the gradient-field that compensates the through-slice inhomogeneity in field map data. Both automated approaches i) were much faster than the manual approach, ii) lead to significant improvements in spinal cord gray matter tSNR compared to no z-shimming and iii) resulted in beneficial effects that were stable across time. While the field map-based approach performed slightly worse than the manual approach, the EPI-based approach performed at least as well as the manual one and was furthermore validated on an independently acquired corticospinal data-set (N > 100). Together, we believe that automated z-shimming will improve the data quality of future spinal fMRI studies and — by removing the subjective step of manual z-shim selection — may also lead to increased reproducibility in longitudinal studies.

scholarly journals What are the gray and white matter volumes of the human spinal cord?

2020 ◽  
Vol 124 (6) ◽  
pp. 1792-1797
Author(s):  
Simon Henmar ◽  
Erik B. Simonsen ◽  
Rune W. Berg
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
High Field ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Human Spinal Cord ◽  
Matter Volume ◽  
Little Finger

Here, we combine high-field MRI (9.4 T) and deep learning for a post mortem reconstruction of the gray and white matter in human spinal cords. We report a minuscule total gray matter volume of 2.87 mL for a female and 3.55 mL for a male. For comparison, these volumes correspond approximately to the distal digit of the little finger.

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