Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes loss of locomotor functions. Nowadays, the relationship between the residual locomotion after SCI and the diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) results still remains unclear.
Methods: Four rhesus monkeys were suffered thoracic cord hemisection. Kinematic evaluation and DTT were performed prior- and post-SCI (6 and 12 weeks). The longitudinal changes of gait parameters and the DTT parameters were analyzed for the injury-contralateral hindlimb. The correlations between gaits and DTT parameters were also investigated.
Results: Almost gait parameters significantly changed after SCI, meanwhile, the caudal-rostral connection rate of DTT showed negative correlation with all gait parameters, demonstrating that the locomotor changes of the injury-contralateral hindlimb were associated with the ratio of residual fibers.
Conclusions: The combinatory use of gait analysis and DTT has been demonstrated to be sensitive to locomotion changes after SCI, and may therefore have potential applications in the pre-clinical studies of SCI.
Keywords: diffusion tensor tractography; gait analysis; injury-contralateral hindlimb; locomotor function; non-human primate; spinal cord injury.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.