Computed tomography of spinal cord atrophy

Spinal cord atrophy takes on several different forms which correlate closely with specific clinical features. The majority of them, however, can be categorized into three distinct patterns, diffuse (transverse myelopathy), hemi-(Brown-Sequard syndrome), or anterior (anterior spinal artery syndrome) atrophy. Until recently, the differential diagnosis had been made solely on the neurological examination. We present three cases of spinal cord atrophy, one in each category. Spinal computed tomography with metrizamide appears to be a reliable supporting diagnostic method for spinal cord atrophy.