Slope analysis of somatosensory evoked potentials in spinal cord injury for detecting contusion injury and focal demyelination

Gracee Agrawal, David Sherman, Anil Maybhate, Michael Gorelik, Douglas A. Kerr, Nitish V. Thakor, Angelo H. All

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

In spinal cord injury (SCI) research there is a need for reliable measures to determine the extent of injury and assess progress due to natural recovery, drug therapy, surgical intervention or rehabilitation. Somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP) can be used to quantitatively examine the functionality of the ascending sensory pathways in the spinal cord. A reduction of more than 50% in peak amplitude or an increase of more than 10% in latency are threshold indicators of injury. However, in the context of injury, SEP peaks are often obscured by noise. We have developed a new technique to investigate the morphology of the SEP waveform, rather than focusing on a small number of peaks. In this study, we compare SEP signals before and after SCI using two rat models: a contusion injury model and a focal experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis model. Based on mean slope changes over the signal, we were able to effectively differentiate pre-injury and post-injury SEP values with high levels of sensitivity (83.3%) and specificity (79.2%).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1159-1164
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Clinical Neuroscience
Volume17
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2010

Keywords

  • Contusion
  • Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis
  • Rat model
  • Somatosensory evoked potentials
  • Spinal cord injury

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Surgery
  • Neurology
  • Clinical Neurology
  • Physiology (medical)

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