Keywords:
Musculoskeletal spine, Neuroradiology spine, MR, Education
Authors:
B. Peters, J. Van Goethem, P. M. Parizel; Antwerp/BE
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-3160
Methods and materials
Subjects:
106 asymptomatic volunteers between 16 and 99 years old were examined between February and November 2018.
A previous history of whiplash or other cervical trauma and MR safety-related contraindications were exclusion criteria.
All volunteers were informed about the purpose of the study and signed an informed consent.
All data was anonymized.
The study was approved by the ethics committee of our institution.
Data acquisition:
All MR examinations were performed on the same 3T MRI scanner (Siemens,
Magnetom Prisma,
Erlangen Germany).
The MRI protocol consisted of a three-dimensional turbo spin-echo intermediate proton density to T2-weighted sequence with variable flip-angle distribution (3D SPACE) focused on the craniocervical ligaments,
with imaging acquisition parameters TR: 1000 ms,
TE 34 ms and a voxel size of 0.64 x 0.55 x 0.73 mm.
Data analysis:
Analysis was performed on a GE PACS running AW-server with multiplanar reconstructions.
The six main ligaments of the craniocervical junction were evaluated: right alar ligament,
left alar ligament,
right transverse ligament,
left transverse ligament,
tectorial membrane and posterior atlanto-occipital ligament.
All ligaments were evaluated on a four point scale of 0 – 3 (0: normal,
1: high signal with normal thickness,
2: thinned ligament,
3: absent ligament (Fig.
4-7)).
Two expert musculoskeletal and/or neuroradiology evaluated each ligament independently.
Readers were blinded for age and sex.
Statistic analysis:
Statistic analysis was done using IBM SPSS Statistics 25.
We performed a Spearman test to correlate age and degenerative changes.