Tierärztliche Hochschule Hannover

Summary
The analysis of the evaluated data was performed with an extended workspace,
SpectroView. In well resolved spectra the peaks of N-acetyl-aspartate, choline,
creatine, lactate, myo-inositol as well as glutamine and glutamate were measurable
using both voxel sizes. Each metabolite represents different pathological changes
depending on their increased or decreased values. Small voxel showed an increased
amount of unreliable measurements due to decreased signal to noise ratio (SNR)
resulting in low spectral resolution. Enlargement of the voxel size in the spinal cord,
which was only possible in the head-to-feet direction, led to loss of presentability of
small focal lesions but permitted a verified assignment of metabolites. Additionally,
the metabolite concentrations were evaluated for all metabolites and showed higher
values in the spinal cord than in the brain, which is consistent with the literature in
other species. The evaluation of the voxel size that is able to require reliable values
of metabolite concentrations in the canine spinal cord is essential for future studies to
investigate prognostic aspects in spinal cord trauma in the dog.
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