Evaluating Advanced Imaging Techniques for Use in the Assessment of Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy

Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) is a disabling condition affecting up to 2% of adults. It arises when arthritic changes in the cervical spine compress and injure the spinal cord, causing progressive loss of bodily function.

Surgery will remove compression and stop injury. However, for a full recovery, it must occur before irreversible spinal cord damage. Current assessments cannot provide this information and today, 95% of patients are left disabled: an assessment that measures spinal cord damage would change this tomorrow.

Imaging advances, well established for measuring disease of the brain, have the potential to provide this in DCM, but requires further investigation. This is the subject of this proposed application: specifically, to investigate 3 different but promising imaging approaches for the assessment of DCM:

1. Advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to image within the spinal cord
2. Advanced MRI to measure the changes that occur within the brain following DCM
3. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to measure the active disease biology within the spinal cord.

Individuals with a diagnosis of DCM, will be invited to undergo one of these options, before and after their surgical treatment. Clinical measures used in routine practice will be noted, in order to draw comparisons with imaging. A healthy control group will also be used for MRI imaging, in order to identify changes specific to DCM. Aside from the additional imaging, there will be no changes in routine care.