Free & Bound Water Evaluation of Articular Cartilage

Jiang Du¹, Chantal Pauli², Eric Diaz¹, Won Bae¹, Sheronda Statum¹, Darryl DLima², Christine Chung¹

Multi-component analysis of CPMG spin echo images has been performed by several groups to identify and characterize different water compartments in articular cartilage. However, CPMG sequences on clinical MR scanners typically operated in a TE range (>10 ms) that does not allow detection of short T2 water components, or water bound to collagen and/or PG. Here we propose a bi-component T2* analysis of images from ultrashort TE (UTE) or UTE spectroscopic imaging (UTESI) to quantify T2* and fractions of the free and bound water components in cartilage.