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Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging provides structural information about nerve fiber tissue. The first eigenvector of the diffusion tensor is aligned with the nerve fibers, i.e., longitudinally in the spinal cord. The underlying hypothesis of this study is that the presence of collateral nerve fibers running orthogonal to the longitudinal fibers results in an orderly arrangement of the second eigenvectors. Magnetic resonance diffusion tensor scans were performed with line scan diffusion imaging on a clinical MR scanner. Axial sections were scanned in a human cervical spinal cord specimen at 625 μm resolution and the cervical spinal cord of four normal volunteers at 1250 μm resolution. The spinal cord specimen was fixed and stained for later light microscopy of the collateral fiber architecture at 0.53 μm resolution. Diffusion measured by MR was found to be anisotropic for both white and gray matter areas of the …