Brandon Clinton Jones^1,2, Cheng-Chieh Cheng^1,3, Xia Zhao¹, Hyunyeol Lee^1,4, Mona Al Mukaddam⁵, Peter J Snyder⁵, Chamith S Rajapakse¹, Hee Kwon Song¹, and Felix W Wehrli^1
1Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ²Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ³Computer Science and Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ⁴School of Electronics, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Republic of, ⁵Department of Endocrinology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Fifteen osteoporotic, treatment-naïve, and 19 non-osteoporotic postmenopausal women have been examined in an ongoing study to evaluate tibial cortical bone health via solid-state MRI. Proton dual-echo UTE and IR-prepared rapid-UTE sequences were used for quantification of pore and bound water concentrations, and a ³¹P PETRA-ZTE sequence for quantification of bone mineralization. Osteoporotics showed elevated pore and total water concentration, thinner cortices, decreased ³¹P content and degree of bone mineralization (DBM). Our preliminary results suggest that solid-state MR biomarkers of bone porosity and DBM may be useful in evaluating cortical bone health.

Jianfeng Bao¹, Xiao Wang¹, Yong Zhang¹, and Jingliang Cheng^1
1Department of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

Postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP) in the female elderly population has become one of serious health problems of the rapidly aging society in China.  The aim of this work was to preliminary investigate the changes of bone marrow fatty acid composition in the presence of trabecular bone of PMOP and age-matched healthy controls (HC) using 2D intermolecular double-quantum coherence based magnetic resonance spectroscopy (iDQC-MRS). We found monounsaturated fatty acids (P < 0.001) and polyunsaturated fatty acids(p < 0.01) were significant higher lower in the PMOP group. The lower unsaturated fatty acids levels may play an important role in the pathogenesis of PMOP. 

Erick Odoyo Buko^1,2, Sampada Bhave¹, Ferenc Tóth¹, and Casey P Johnson^1,2
1Veterinary Clinical Sciences, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, United States, ²Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States

Intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) is a promising method to measure both tissue diffusion and perfusion using a single multi b-value diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) acquisition. In this work, we investigated whether IVIM is sensitive in detecting surgically-induced femoral head ischemia in a piglet model of avascular necrosis. We found that the IVIM perfusion coefficient (D_f) and fraction (f) decreased in the ischemic vs. contralateral-control femoral heads. Conversely, the IVIM diffusion coefficient (D_s) increased as a result of subsequent injury to the operated femoral head. These findings suggest that IVIM may provide a non-contrast-enhanced means to assess bone ischemia and perfusion.

Jin Liu¹, Jian-Wei Liao¹, Jia-Xin Feng¹, Wei Li¹, Xiao-Jun Chen¹, Lin Yao¹, Pan-Hui Huang¹, Long Qian², Ya-Jun Ma³, and Shao-Lin Li^1
1Department of Radiology, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China, ²MR Research, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China, ³Department of Radiology, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States

Compositional MR Imaging, which is combined of a Short TR Adiabatic Inversion Recovery prepared Ultrashort Echo Time (STAIR-UTE) and the Iterative decomposition of water and fat with echo asymmetry and least squares estimation (IDEAL-IQ) techniques, is developed to measure collagen bound water proton fraction, free water proton fraction, total water proton fraction of trabecular bone in lumbar spine. These biomarkers are highly correlated with bone mineral density, T score and Fracture Risk Assessment Tool scores, which demonstrates that the compositional MR imaging has great potential in diagnosis of patient with osteoporosis.

Nico Sollmann^1,2,3, Edoardo A. Becherucci², Christof Boehm⁴, Malek El Husseini², Stefan Ruschke⁴, Egon Burian², Jan S. Kirschke², Thomas M. Link³, Karupppasamy Subburaj⁵, Dimitrios C. Karampinos⁴, Roland Krug³, Thomas Baum², and Michael Dieckmeyer^2
1Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Ulm, Ulm, Germany, ²Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, ³Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, ⁴Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, ⁵Engineering Product Development (EPD) Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore

Osteoporosis is characterized by increased skeletal fragility with vertebral fractures (VFs). Areal bone mineral density (BMD) from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the reference standard but has well-known limitations. Texture analysis (TA) can provide parameters of tissue microstructure using spine chemical shift encoding-based water-fat MRI (CSE-MRI) and computed tomography (CT), thus potentially improving fracture risk estimation. This study found that a model including volumetric BMD (vBMD) and several texture features (TFs) from CSE-MRI and CT predicts 81% of the variance regarding osteoporotic VF status, compared to 47% when based on vBMD and the proton density fat fraction (PDFF) only. 

Tamar K. De-Levie^1,2, Yael S. Schiffenbauer¹, Ido Druckmann³, Vanessa Rouach⁴, Naftali Stern^2,4,5,6, Itzhak Binderman⁷, and Uri Nevo^1,5
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel, ²Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel, ³Skeletal Imaging Division, Tel Aviv-Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel, ⁴Institute of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Hypertension, Tel Aviv-Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel, ⁵The Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel, ⁶The Sagol Center for Epigenetics, Tel Aviv-Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel, ⁷Department of Oral Biology, School of Dental Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tal-Aviv, Israel

In-vivo detection of osteoporosis-related changes in the distal radius bone marrow, using MR protocols, could provide safe and accessible means for screening and monitoring. A clinical trial was performed, including 26 women assigned into three study groups: healthy premenopausal (n=7), healthy postmenopausal (n=10) and osteoporotic postmenopausal (n=9). Fat composition was evaluated using T2 maps, two-compartment model of T1 and Dixon sequence. The osteoporotic group exhibited higher fat content and lower T2 values compared to the healthy premenopausal group. This study provides proof of concept for the use of the distal radius bone marrow as probing site for osteoporosis.

Erick Buko^1,2, Alexandra R Armstrong¹, Ferenc Tóth¹, and Casey P Johnson^1,2
1Veterinary Clinical Sciences, University of Minnesota, ST. Paul, MN, United States, ²Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States

Quantitative mapping of T2, T1ρ, adiabatic T1ρ, and adiabatic T2ρ relaxation times may be useful to assess ischemic injury to the femoral head. In this work, we investigated whether these relaxation times are sensitive in detecting compositional changes to the primary spongiosa (the region of the metaphysis adjacent to the growth plate) following ischemic injury to the femoral head in a piglet model. We found that T1ρ and adiabatic T2ρ decreased in the primary spongiosa following ischemic injury to the femoral epiphysis, which suggests these methods may be useful to assess femoral head growth disturbances following ischemic injury.