Abstract #3606

Reiser M, Glaser C, Filidoro L, Dietrich O, Weber J

In view of osteoarthritis, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was used to analyze the structure of human hyaline articular cartilage. The experiments were performed on clinical 1.5T MRI systems with a maximum resolution of 468468m. Using a self developed software package, maps of diffusion tensor trace, anisotropy, eigenvalues, and eigenvectors were visualized. The general applicability of DTI experiments to articular cartilage structural analysis was strengthened. The findings are in good agreement with current literature about the collagenous fiber architecture of cartilage.