Ex vivo Evaluation of ADC Values within Spinal Cord White Matter Tracts
Eric D. Schwartza,
Emily T. Cooperb,
Chih-Liang China,
Suzanne Wehrlic,
Alan Tesslerb,d and
David B. Hackneye
a Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia PA
b the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia PA
C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Core Facility, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia PA
d the Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital, Philadelphia PA
e the Department of Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA
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FIG 1. MR image and corresponding histologic sections from normal rat spinal cord. A, Schematic diagram of major ascending and descending tracts in the rat spinal cord overlaid on a b = 0 (T2-weighted) image of a rat spinal cord. Regions of interest were drawn in the following tracts: rubrospinal tract (RST), reticulospinal tract (ReST), vestibulospinal (VST), fasciculus gracilis (FG), fascisulus cuneatus (FC), and dorsal corticospinal tract (dCST). While the dorsal white matter tracts are homogeneous, the ventral and lateral tracts are mixed with other fibers from the STT-spinothalamic tract and dSCT-dorsal spinocerebellar tract. A significant difference between the human and rat spinal cord is the location of the corticospinal tract. In the human, the corticospinal tract is located in the lateral white matter, while in the rat it is located in the dorsal white matter.
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FIG 1. B–G, 1-µm-thick histologic sections at 40x, stained with toluidine blue of the RST (B), ReST (C), VST (D), FG (E), FC (F), and dCST (G), respectively (black bar = 50 µ). Note that the largest axons appear to be within the VST.
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