Magnetic Resonance Myelography at 0.5 T

The aims of this study were to evaluate the clinical usefulness of magnetic resonance myelography (MR-M), to suggest technical improvements and to evaluate the results obtained by comparing them with conventional MRI and conventional myelography. A series of 14 healthy volunteers and 43 patients with myelinic or radicular disease were studied by conventional MR and MR-M on an 0.5T unit using sequences pre-optimized for the acquisition of myelographic images. MR-M did not modify the diagnosis made by conventional MRI in cases of myelinic or radicular compression, but it did provide useful additional information in 38% of cases. It provided no additional information on compressive disease. Similar results in terms of quality of information were obtained from the correlation with conventional myelography. In our opinion, MR-M is useful only for cases of discal or spondylogenetic disease.