Spinal Trauma and Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)

The imaging methods for evaluating patients with acute spinal trauma has dramatically changed in the last decade especially with the development of thin section multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) and isotropic datasets that provide high-resolution sagittal and coronal reformats. MDCT allows for a comprehensive assessment of spinal column injury that has largely supplanted radiography except in the pediatric population. MRI has become the procedure of choice for evaluation of the spinal cord and surrounding soft tissues when there is a suspected SCI.