Research Articles
ZHANG Xin, CHENG Kebin, LIU Fan, FENG Huan, Liu Li
Objectiveto establish an accurate and objective assay to evaluate the time of fresh and/or old vertebral compression fractures while lowering influence of subjective factors. Methods50 patients with 52 vertebras were scanned by follow-up MRI three times, on day 30, day 90, and day 180 or more, respectively after the injury. These patients came to the hospital after falling down on the ground within 13 days, and were all diagnosed as vertebral compression fractures without the osteoporosis during January 2013 to June 2014 by CT and MRI. The changes in apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values during vertebral fracture healing were statistically analyzed. Formulas were created using SAS 9.3 software according to different parameters. ResultsADC values in vertebral fracture healing process decreased gradually and tended to zero. Significant differences between groups (P < 0.05) were observed when comparing mean ADC values of any two of the four periods (1~13 days,30 days, 90 days, 180 days or more after injury). With discriminant equations in these four periods, the accurate rate was 71.11%. However, the discriminant equations for the two periods (1~13 days and 30 days or more) led to the discriminant accuracy up to 92.22%。ConclusionsADC could help to identify the fresh or old vertebral compression fractures. With high discriminant accuracy of the equations for 1~13 days and 30 days or more, and the simple index collection, the assessment assay in this paper is conducive to the popularization and application in forensic clinical appraisal.
