Abstract
Because of recent rapid progress in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), intraspinal lesions have been clarified. On the correlation between the paralysis grade and MRI signal pattern, it was known that cases of complete paralysis were many in spinally-ruptured and large type while those of incomplete paralysis were many in medium and small type; however, many cases of incomplete paralysis with various symptoms did not necessarily coincide with MRI signal patterns. In this study the correlation between MRI signal patterns in the coronal plane and incomplete paralysis was studied in 27 cases of spinal cord injury in the chronic stage. The results found were 1) the spinal cord lesion of many cases were C3-4 and C4-5; 2) the types of many MRI signal patterns were small oval 44% and girdle 26%; 3) three-dimensional types of the patterns were cylindroid 56%, polygon 22%, cone 18.5%, and gourd 3.5%; 4) the coincidence ratios in size between expected injured areas and the patterns were small 86%, medium 55%, and large 67%.
