Cape Town - 2026 ISMRM-ISMRT Annual Meeting and Exhibition - Advanced MRI Techniques for Spinal Cord Structure, Function, and Physiology

Advanced MRI Techniques for Spinal Cord Structure, Function, and Physiology

Oral

Neuro B

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Ballroom East

08:30 - 10:20

Moderators: Mira Liu & Oscar Jalnefjord

Session Number: 604-01

CME/CE Credit Available

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This session brings together cutting-edge methodological advances in spinal cord MRI, highlighting recent progress in acquisition strategies, image reconstruction, and quantitative analysis across ultra-high magnetic fields. The presentations span innovations in fluid attenuation and tissue nulling, motion correction using deep learning, diffusion and functional MRI, vascular reactivity mapping, CSF flow quantification, and RF/B0 shimming techniques. Emphasis is placed on overcoming long-standing technical challenges in spinal cord imaging, including physiological motion, susceptibility-induced distortions, limited signal-to-noise ratio, and field inhomogeneities. Several studies demonstrate the added value of ultra-high field MRI and advanced hardware configurations, while others focus on validation of MRI-derived metrics against histology and comparison of automated versus manual analysis pipelines. Collectively, the session provides a comprehensive view of the current state of advanced spinal cord MRI, bridging technical development with biological interpretation and translational potential in both preclinical and human studies.

08:30		604-01-001. Fluid Attenuation and Specific Tissue Nulling (FASTEN) – a novel approach to imaging spinal cord pathologies Rupesh Vakkachi Kandi, Poonam Choudhary, Jaladhar Neelavalli, Rakesh Singh, Rakesh Kumar Gupta Philips India Limited, Bangalore, India Impact: Spinal cord lesions, especially the subtle ones are difficult to detect, often due to low lesion-to-background contrast or artifacts. FASTEN technique achieves a double-inversion recovery type of contrast within the spinal cord, enhancing the lesion’s contrast, and thereby, its detectability.
08:41		604-01-002. Mapping Vascular Reactivity in Mouse Spinal Cord at 15.2T Tzu-Wei Lee, Feng Wang, Yikang Li, Li Min Chen, John Gore Vanderbilt University, Nashville, United States of America Impact: This is the first report of the vascular reactivity of mouse spinal cords and confirms the potential to detect and calibrate BOLD signals.
08:52		604-01-003. 7T post-mortem MRI–histology validation of diffusion metrics for axonal injury in human spinal cord injury Nikolai Lesack, Sarah Morris, Taylor Swift-LaPointe, Andrew Yung, Kirsten Bale, Shana George, Andrew Bauman, Piotr Kozlowski, Zahra Samadi-Bahrami, Caron Fournier, Pushwant Mattu, Kevin Dong, Femke Streijger, G. R. Wayne Moore, Adam Velenosi, Veronica Hirsch-Reinshagen, Brian Kwon, Cornelia Laule University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Impact: Validating diffusion MRI against axon density in human spinal cord injury shows which metrics best reflect axonal damage. This evidence can refine biomarker selection, guide clinical research directions, and accelerate translation of diffusion MRI for monitoring injury and evaluating therapies.
09:03		604-01-004. 7T spinal cord fMRI using slice-wise frequency and xyz-gradient B0 shimming Alexandre D'Astous, Caroline Landelle, Arnaud Bréhéret, Antoine Guénette, Julien Doyon, Eva Alonso Ortiz, Julien Cohen-Adad Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, Canada Impact: Slice-wise shimming increases sensitivity to task-related spinal cord activity in fMRI compared to volume-wise shimming at 7T. This shimming approach opens the door to studying spinal cord functions at the mesoscale with higher precision.
09:14		604-01-005. Investigations on RF Shimming with a 16-Channel Coaxial-End Dipole Array for Combined Head and C-spine MRI at 9.4T Felix Glang, Georgiy Solomakha, Dario Bosch, Klaus Scheffler, Nikolai Avdievich Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria Impact: We show that 2D RF shimming with a 16-channel double-row dipole array improves excitation uniformity for combined brain and spine imaging at 9.4T, while improvements for 3D excitation are limited. This informs future developments in parallel transmission for ultra-high-field neuroimaging.
09:25		604-01-006. Motion Correction for Spinal Cord Diffusion and Functional MRI using Deep Learning Nontharat Tucksinapinunchai, Uten Yarach, Julien Cohen-Adad Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand Impact: The proposed slice-wise DL-based motion correction framework effectively compensates for in-plane motion in spinal cord dMRI and fMRI, substantially improving spatial and temporal consistency for quantitative and functional spinal cord studies over traditional registration approaches.
09:36		604-01-007. Deep Learning vs. Manual Segmentation for Spinal CSF Flow in PC-MRI Eder Rodriguez Martinez, Pan Liu, Kimi Owashi, Olivier Baledent Université de Picardie Jules Verne (UPJV), Amiens, France Impact: DL-assisted CSF segmentation promotes reproducible neurofluid biomarker extraction while reducing time and expert dependency. By standardizing PC-MRI analysis, it generates comparable datasets and shared benchmarks, contributing to more consistent multi-site research and advancing quantitative neuroimaging in the scientific community.
09:47		604-01-008. Automatic Spinal Cord Gray Matter Segmentation Across Multiple Contrasts, Magnetic Fields, Regions and Pathologies Nilser Laines-Medina, Jan Valosek, Samira Mchinda, Katerina Krejci, Josef Bednarik, Tomas Horak, Petr Kudlicka, Nico Papinutto, Roland Henry, Deborah Pareto, Jaume Sastre-Garriga, Alex Rovira, Mindy Levin, Feroze Mohamed, Seth Smith, Tobias Granberg, Christopher Hemond, Charidimos Tsagkas, Cristina Granziera, Regina Schlaeger, Claudia Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott, Kristin O'Grady, Gergely David, Virginie Callot, Julien Cohen-Adad NeuroPoly Lab, Montreal, Canada Impact: This work introduces a robust, generalizable deep-learning model for automatic GM segmentation across MRI contrasts, field strengths, and pathologies. Integrated into Spinal Cord Toolbox (SCT), it supports reproducible analysis and facilitates quantitative biomarker extraction in multicentric and clinical research contexts
09:58		604-01-009. Quantifying patient-specific spinal cord morphometric abnormalities in degenerative cervical myelopathy Merve Kaptan, Sandrine Bédard, Augustijn de Boer, Yiyu Wang, Christine S W Law, Dario Pfyffer, Anthony Gatti, John Ratliff, Brian Hargreaves, Anand Veeravagu, Hugo Decker, Matthew Petterson, Todd Alamin, Yasin Dhaher, Andrew Smith, Joel Fundaun, Gary Glover, Sean Mackey, Benjamin De Leener, Andre Marquand, Julien Cohen-Adad, Fauziyya Muhammad, Zachary Smith, Kenneth Weber Stanford University, Stanford, United States of America Impact: Mapping slice-wise spinal cord morphological deviations (relative to a reference healthy cohort) in patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) through normative modeling can provide an objective markers for DCM diagnosis, prognosis, longitudinal monitoring, and treatment planning.
10:09		604-01-010. Noise-Adaptive Self-Supervised Denoising for Metal Artifact Reduction in Accelerated Cervical Spine MRI Renqing Luo, Nikola Janjusevic, Haoyang Pei, Yao Wang, Iman Khodarahmi, Li Feng Bernard and Irene Schwartz Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States of America Impact: This approach enables high-bandwidth metal artifact reduction in cervical-spine MRI without SNR loss, allowing faster, distortion-reduced imaging near implants. It could improve diagnostic confidence in metal imaging and can also be extended to other applications requiring high-bandwidth acquisition.