Abstract Spinal cord functional imaging offers new insights into normal sensorimotor processing and monitoring disease processes affecting the cord. However, all imaging-based techniques suffer from unwanted contributions to the measured…
Abstract MR spectroscopy is an extremely valuable tool for assessing tissue biochemistry in vivo. Its use in the spinal cord presents several technical challenges due to geometrical, anatomical, and physiological…
Abstract Blood oxygenation level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) is widely used by the neuroimaging community for studies of the brain, but remains controversial in the spinal cord…
Abstract The MR signal from spinal cord tissue arises almost entirely from water. T 2 -weighted contrast is determined by tissue water properties and is a valuable tool for qualitative…
Abstract Spinal cord arteries and veins represent tiny, millimeter-to-submillimeter blood vessels for which in vivo depiction has only recently become possible using noninvasive imaging techniques. A brief overview of the…
Abstract In vivo magnetic resonance imaging of the spinal cord is challenging due to susceptibility variations between various tissue types, air in the lungs and trachea, and in some cases…
Abstract This chapter will introduce the q -space theory, which describes the behavior of water molecules probing their restricted environment without assuming a specific probability function of their spatial distribution….
Abstract Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and specifically diffusion MRI opened, for the first time, a window into the in vivo physiology of white matter. Almost two decades ago, diffusion tensor…
Abstract Radiofrequency receive-only coil arrays consist of a spatial arrangement of several small surface coil elements that record the magnetic resonance signal independently. This provides two major benefits: first, the…
Abstract In the human spinal cord, the magnetic flux density is spatially inhomogeneous, which is mainly due to the different susceptibilities of the vertebrae, the intervertebral disks, and the air-filled…
