Jos G. Raya1, Gerd Melkus2,
Silvia Adam-Neumair3, Olaf Dietrich4, Maximilian F.
Reiser, Peter Jakob2, Christian Glaser
1Josef Lissner Laboratory for Biomedial
Imaging, , University of Munich, Munich, Germany; 2Deparment of
experimental physics V, University of Wrzburg, Germany; 3Department
of Clinical Radiology, University of Munich, Germany; 4Josef
Lissner Laboratory for Biomedial Imaging, Department of Clinical Radiology,
University of Munich, Germany
DTI
has great potential for the early diagnosis of osteoarthritis since it is
sensitive to the proteoglycan (PG) content and the integrity of the collagen
network. In this work we investigate the effect of progressive PG depletion
on the DTI parameters. DTI and T2 of human bone-on-cartilage samples as well
as their PG content were measured before and after proteoglycan depletion.
ADC showed a linear (r2=0.86,
P<0.007) dependence with the PG
loss. The diffusion anisotropy (FA and first eigenvector) remained unchanged.
Measurements of the T2 relaxation time demonstrated that the collagen
structure of the cartilage was unaffected by PG depletion.
Keywords