Gunthard Lykowsky1, Kathrin Hemberger1, Peter M. Jakob1, 2, Daniel Haddad1
1MRB Research Center, Wrzburg, Germany; 2Department of Experimental Physics 5, University of Wrzburg, Wrzburg, Germany
Sodium is known to be a sensitive MR imaging biomarker for early diagnosis of knee articular cartilage osteoarthritis (OA). The goat animal model closely matches the human knee anatomy and can be used to mimic the progressive nature of OA and monitor the loss of proteoglycans. We have developed a TORO (transmit-only, receive only) coil setup which allows, in combination with a 3D UTE sequence, improved sodium imaging of the goat knee at 1.5T. High quality sodium images of the goat knee are shown.