Advanced Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Spinal Cord: Technical Aspects and Clinical Use.

For a long time, technical obstacles have hampered the acquisition of high-resolution images and the development of reliable processing protocols for spinal cord (SC) MRI. Fortunately, this scenario has changed in the past 5-10 years, due to hardware and software improvements. Nowadays, with advanced protocols, SC MRI is considered a useful tool for several inherited and acquired neurologic diseases, not only for diagnosis approach but also for pathophysiological unraveling and as a biomarker for disease monitoring and clinical trials. In this review, we address advanced SC MRI sequences for macrostructural and microstructural evaluation, useful semiautomatic and automatic processing tools and clinical applications on several neurologic conditions such as hereditary cerebellar ataxia, hereditary spastic paraplegia, motor neuron diseases and multiple sclerosis.