Alexander C. Wright1, Jonathon Yoder2,
Nicholas Tustison3, James Gee3, Felix W. Wehrli1,
Dawn M. Elliott2
1Laboratory for Structural NMR Imaging,
Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United
States; 2McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory, Department of
Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United
States; 3Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory, Department
of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
We
have quantified local strains in a bovine tail intervertebral disc by imaging
it with a Helmholtz-pair local transmit coil with a decoupled 4-element
re-ceive phased array in a whole-body 7 T MRI scanner. The image data were of
exceptional quality and were processed by an advanced algorithm to yield
high-resolution strain maps in the axial and sagittal planes of the disc.