Transverse relaxation based MR techniques for quantitative assessment of biological tissues

Dr Tonima Ali
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, MR (Barth Group), Centre for Advanced Imaging
The University of Queensland, presents:

Transverse relaxation based MR techniques for quantitative assessment of biological tissues

Many NMR and MRI measurements rely on signal from ¹H (the proton nucleus), which is present in abundance in the water of cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) as well as in other tissue components like fat. The transverse spin relaxation time (T₂) of ¹H MR is sensitive to the restricted rotational and translational motion of water molecules in biological tissues.

The quantitative T₂ measures are also sensitive to tissue water content due to the interactions of ¹H population with local micro-environment. Transverse relaxation, therefore, has the potentials to indirectly enquire the structural organization and composition of tissue that hosts the ¹H population.

This presentation will elaborate on the recently developed techniques based on transverse relaxation of ¹H for 1) evaluation of the structural organization of collagen scaffold in articular cartilage that was used to identify collagen architecture in kangaroo knee cartilages; 2) measurement of mammographic density analogous quantities from transverse relaxation decays obtained from breast slices using portable NMR; and 3) establishment of a MRI-only protocol for diagnosis and monitoring of Osteoarthritis (OA) in knee joint that was used to identify the pathogenesis cascade of OA.