Why you should insist on oblique views of the Cervical Spine MRI

Look at why you should insist on oblique views of the Cervical Spine MRI

You should insist on oblique views of cervical MRI’s because they really tell the story. Typical axial slices are oblique to the foraminal canals and can actually be misleading as you will see in the video.

Only the oblique views show how large the degenerative disc really is, in comparison to the standard axial slices.

Transcription:

One of the challenges when looking at cervical MRIs is really getting a proper look at the foraminal canals, particularly at the cervical levels 3/4 4/5 5/6, and even 6/7. In  this case, we have a definite protrusion at cervical 5/6, and we can see it’s here, but we don’t really get a true sense of dimension using the the axial slices. 

Well, it’s got a little bit of protrusion and maybe a little indentation of the myelin, but nothing to write home about. However, if you go to the sides, for example, we can see this protrusion here. We take a look at the axial slice, and we don’t really get a great sense of how big it is here. We can see it’s again smaller, but not really that big. And if you keep going again, everything sort of disappears.

The radiologists have better equipment and magnification and resolution than I do on this reader, but I have probably the typical kind of reader that most of you all might have as well. So I don’t think this is such a great revelation in terms of what’s happening in the Foraminal Canal. Let’s just take a look and see what happens when we take a look at an oblique picture.

Now look at how much larger this appears here at the 5/6th level with the oblique views. And if we take a look at the obliques of the foraminal canal, this is given a much larger appearance of the disc extrusion, and where we’re going to see it located is right there. I think this is a much better representation of the size and how much this disc extrusion occupies the foraminal canal than a standard axial view. So if you ask the MRI facility that you normally use or you have one yourself, I would really suggest distinguishing yourself from the rest of the units in your area by supplying oblique MRI views of the cervical spine. I think they are really helpful.