Spinal Cord Injury MRI Analysis

Dissected spinal cords were placed in a glass tube filled with fluorinert FC-770A (3M™ Electronic Liquids, Saint Paul, MI, USA) within a solenoid antenna. The coil was specifically designed for spinal cord studies [37 (link)]. Acquisitions were performed with a 9.4 Tesla MRI (Agilent Varian 9.4/160/ASR, Santa Clara, CA, USA) associated with a VnmrJ acquisition system (Agilent, Palo Alto, CA, USA). Acquisition parameters were the following: spin-echo multi slice (SEMS, TR = 1580 ms TE = 30.55 ms, NE = 1, AVG = 30, FOV = 10 × 10, 36 slides, thickness = 1 mm, gap = 0 mm, acquisition matrix (NREAD*NPHASE = 128 × 128). Diffusion gradients were applied in three directions (Gs = 10 G/cm; delta = 6.844 ms; separation = 15.05 ms; b-value = 499.21 s/mm²). Regions of interest were manually segmented using Myrian software (Intrasens, Montpellier, France) and data were processed using a MATLAB-based in-house toolbox, as we previously described [34 (link)]. The following parameters were analyzed: lesion area at the epicenter, lesion extension, and lesion volume. Number of C57BL6/6J mice included in the MRI study: 18 C57BL6/6J experimental mice (12 females and 6 males); 19 control mice (12 females and 7 males). Animals were sacrificed at 6 weeks after SCI.