Purpose: To evaluate the relationship between the T2 patterns of spinal cord multiple sclerosis lesions and their contrast uptake.
Material and method: We retrospectively reviewed the appearance of spinal cord lesions in 29 patients (with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis) who had signs and symptoms of myelopathy on neurologic examination and at least one active lesion visualized on magnetic resonance examinations performed between 2004 and 2011. We correlated the T2 patterns of lesions with contrast enhancement and calculated sensitivity and specificity in predicting gadolinium enhancement.
Results: Only focal patterns consisting of a lesion’s center homogenously brighter than its periphery on T2-weighed images (type I) correlated significantly with the presence of contrast enhancement (p = 0.004). Sensitivity was 0.307 and specificity 0.929. In contrast, enhancement was not significantly related to uniformly hyperintense T2 focal lesions (type II) or diffuse (type III) pattern defined as poorly delineated areas of multiple small, confluent, subtle hyperintense T2 lesions (p >0.5 for both).
Conclusions: We believe that information about the activity of multiple sclerosis spinal cord lesions in patients with myelopathy may be extracted not only from contrast enhanced, but also from non-enhanced magnetic resonance images.