| Joint is crucial for human movement.Joint diseases lead to limited moving ability and pain,which affect patients’ quality of life a lot.The purpose of this thesis is to develop novel joint function evaluation methods using multi-modal Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI)and apply these methods to clinical research.The significance of this study includes in-vivo radiation-free joint motion capture and quantitative assessment of articular cartilage,which provide accurate methods for early detection of arthritis and the prevention of sports injuries.A k-space golden angle radial sampling technique was utilized to achieve dynamic joint motion MRI.A Slice-to-Volume registration algorithm was developed for alignment between 2-dimension dynamic images and 3-dimension bone positions.The combination of these two methods allowed for accurate in-vivo joint motion capture.The accuracy of the introduced method is within 1 mm and 1 degree.The advantages of the current technique over traditional joint tracking techniques include high accuracy,radiation-free and less test time.Also,a T2-Mapping based method was applied to quantify the biochemical compositions of articular cartilage.The impact of marathon running on knee joint cartilage was analyzed.Higher T2 relaxation time after marathon running was found in patellofemoral cartilage and anterior medial part of tibiofemoral cartilage,meaning biochemical changes in these areas.A significant correlation between T2 relaxation time alteration and runners’ BMI,meaning cartilage biochemical composition alteration was correlated with joint loading.The proposed method could be applied to the detection of early arthritis and sports injuries prevention.We proposed novel methods for joint function evaluation based on multi-modal MRI,which are composed of two parts,joint motion tracking,and joint biochemical composition quantification.These two methods have great potential in musculoskeletal disorder pathology research and early detection of joint diseases. |
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