• Ravinder Reddy Regatte, Sarma V S Akella, Arijitt Borthakur, and Ravinder Reddy.
• MMRRCC, Department of Radiology, Stellar-Chance Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6100, USA. regatte@mail.mmrrcc.upenn.edu
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2003 Jan 1; 17 (1): 114-21.

PurposeTo quantify glycosaminoglycans (GAG) in intact bovine patellar cartilage using the proton spin-lock ratio imaging method. This approach exploits spin-lattice relaxation time in the rotating frame (T(1rho)) imaging and T(1rho) relaxivity (R(1rho)).Materials And MethodsAll the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments were performed on a 4-T whole-body GE Signa scanner (GEMS, Milwaukee, WI), and spectroscopy experiments of chondroitin sulfate (CS) phantoms were done on a 2-T custom-built spectrometer. A custom-built 11-cm-diameter transmit-receive birdcage coil, which was tuned to a proton frequency of 170 MHz, was employed for the imaging experiments. T(1rho) measurements were made using a fast spin echo (FSE) sequence pre-encoded with a three-pulse cluster consisting of two 90 degrees hard pulses separated by a low-power rectangle pulse for spin-locking.ResultsThe methodology is first validated on CS phantoms and then used to quantify GAG content in intact bovine cartilage (N = 5). There is a good agreement between the GAG map calculated from the T(1rho) ratio imaging method (71 +/- 4%) and GAG measured from spectrophotometric assay (75 +/- 5%) in intact bovine tissue.ConclusionWe have demonstrated a proton spin-lock ratio imaging method to quantify absolute GAG distribution in the cartilage in a noninvasive and nondestructive manner.Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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