Abstract
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers the opportunity to study biological tissues and processes in a non-disruptive manner. The technique shows promise for the study of the load-bearing performance (consolidation) of articular cartilage and changes in articular cartilage accompanying osteoarthritis. Consolidation of articular cartilage involves the recording of two transient characteristics: the change over time of strain and the hydrostatic excess pore pressure (HEPP). MRI study of cartilage consolidation under mechanical load is limited by difficulties in measuring the HEPP in the presence of the strong magnetic fields associated with the MRI technique. Here we describe the use of MRI to image and characterize bovine articular cartilage deforming under load in an MRI compatible consolidometer while monitoring pressure with a Fabry-Perot interferometer-based fiber-optic pressure transducer.
Highlights
Articular cartilage (AC) is an avascular connective tissue lining the articulating surfaces of long bones in mammals
We describe a method that allows the MR imaging of cartilage before and after loading without the inaccuracies associated with repositioning the sample, while at the same time allowing the recording of changes in hydrostatic excess pore pressure associated with constant load
The dynamics of unconstrained mechanical consolidation of articular cartilage samples were characterised by measuring the time dependence of two quantities: hydrostatic excess pore pressure (HEPP) and compressive displacement
Summary
Articular cartilage (AC) is an avascular connective tissue lining the articulating surfaces of long bones in mammals. Healthy adult human cartilage is 2–4 mm thick and comprises extracellular biopolymers (collagen, 15%–20%; proteoglycans, 3%–10%; and lipids, 1%–5%) with the primary function of enabling load bearing in a mobile joint. The anisotropy is associated with collagen fiber alignment, which varies throughout the thickness of the cartilage [1,4] and the distribution of hydrated proteoglycans [5], which together generate the osmotic pressure-based load bearing stiffness of the tissue. The importance of water and its local environment in load bearing by cartilage makes it an ideal candidate for study by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a technique that is sensitive to the mobility of water molecules in biological tissue. MRI is a technique that is ideally suited to the study of structural changes in soft tissues such as AC [11,12,13], with a range of characterization techniques available [3,4,11,12,14]
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