Advancements in Sodium MRI for Cartilage Imaging

Purdue Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Deva Chan and PhD candidate Cameron Villarreal have developed an approach for using a new technique for sodium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) called the 3D dual-echo PETALUTE sequence to examine the health of articular cartilage in the knee. Their team tested this new method, developed by Dr. Uzay Emir, a collaborator at Purdue and now at UNC, against existing approaches to evaluate how well it could quantify glycosaminoglycans, a critical tissue component that can be measured by sodium content, within knee cartilage.

The study involved scanning five healthy subjects using both the new PETALUTE sequence and existing state-of-the-art techniques. Chan's team showed that PETALUTE provided similar sodium quantification in cartilage compared to the currently used methods, but with further acceleration using retrospective compressed sensing techniques while maintaining high image quality.

Overall, the 3D dual-echo PETALUTE sequence offers a promising improvement in scan efficiency without compromising performance, making it a valuable tool for sodium MRI of articular cartilage.

This improvement makes sodium MRI scans faster and easier to perform, allowing doctors and researchers to use them more frequently. As a result, the PETALUTE sequence could help us better understand cartilage health and how diseases affect it.

Learn more here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00256-024-04774-5