Figure 2

Qualitative changes over time of the post-traumatic central canal lumen, ependymal and periependymal regions at 1 mm cranial to the lesion epicenter. Toluidine blue stained transverse sections of contused rat spinal cords 1 mm cranial to the lesion epicenter are shown in A-H. Low magnification images reveal a progressively increasing central canal lumen from day 1 (A), day 28 (B), day 120 (C) and day 450 (D) following injury. High magnification images reveal progressive thinning of the ependymal region, ependymal ciliary loss, and periependymal edema from day 1 (E), day 28 (F), day 120 (G) and day 450 (H) following injury. Magnification = 40× for A-D, 300× for E-H.