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Abstract #0542

Bone Water Concentration as a New Metric for Cortical Bone Quality

Hamidreza Saligheh Rad1, James Love1, Jeremy F. Magland1, Mary F. Leonard2, Felix W. Wehrli1

1Laboratory for Structural NMR Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 2Nephrology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States


Increased porosity is a major cause of impaired strength of cortical bone. Ultra-short TE MRI has been shown to be able to quantify bone water, which is either collagen-bound or residing in the pores of the Haversian and lacuno-canalicular system. In this preliminary work we compare bone water concentration (BWC) in the tibial mid-shaft in a group of subjects with 3D bone mineral density (BMD) at the same location as well as areal BMD at the hip and spine. BWC is found to be inversely related to BMD at all sites and increasing with age.