Premium
Displacement encoding for the measurement of cartilage deformation
Author(s) -
Neu Corey P.,
Walton Jeffrey H.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.21464
Subject(s) - cartilage , displacement (psychology) , materials science , deformation (meteorology) , biomedical engineering , transverse plane , displacement field , joint (building) , strain (injury) , compression (physics) , stress (linguistics) , nuclear magnetic resonance , physics , anatomy , composite material , structural engineering , finite element method , medicine , psychology , linguistics , thermodynamics , philosophy , engineering , psychotherapist
Articular cartilage is a load bearing and lubricating tissue in animal joints. Heterogeneous deformations arise in the structured and zonal tissue under the application of mechanical load. The character of these deformations is altered by degenerative joint disease. Here, we document an MRI‐based technique for determining deformations throughout the volume of the tissue based on displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) and a fast spin echo (FSE) readout. A DENSE‐FSE technique was designed to image cartilage at 9.4 Tesla in a deformed state during the application of cyclic mechanical loading. Artifact elimination arising from stimulated echoes and FSE was accomplished by radio frequency pulse phase cycling. The error of the technique was random and was quantified in terms of precision as better than 0.17% strain. Heterogeneous deformation field patterns in axial, transverse, and shear directions were quantified in a single tissue explant loaded in simple uniaxial compression. The technique is appropriate for documenting tissue deformations during applied physiologically relevant stress levels and loading rates. It may also be applied to characterize the micromechanical strain environment in normal, diseased, or regenerated cartilage in response to applied mechanical loading. Magn Reson Med, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.