Keerthi Shet1, Sarmad Siddiqui2,
John Kurhanewicz2, Xiaojuan Li1
1Radiology, University of California at
San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Radiology,
University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco , CA, United States
Osteoarthritis
(OA) is a degenerative joint disease that results in degradation and gradual
loss of articular cartilage. Proteoglycan loss and alteration in the
cartilage has been considered an important marker for detecting and measuring
the progress of OA. The N-acetyl resonance observed in HR-MAS spectra arises
from the proteoglycan content in cartilage. We aim to detect the changes in
the mobility of the N-acetyl moiety due to the degradation process that
occurs in OA as reflected in the relaxation parameters of the entity (T1 and
T2). An increase in T2 relaxation time is observed in case of ex-vivo human
osteo-arthritic cartilage samples.