BUFFALO, N.Y. – Diseases and injuries of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue, such as ligaments, tendons and bone, are a major cause of disability in the U.S.
MRI has increasingly become the diagnostic tool of choice for evaluation and management of these diseases and injuries, primarily due to its ability to provide information on anatomic structure and function in a noninvasive way.
But modern MRI still has some limitations.
Ad Statistics
Times Displayed: 173676
Times Visited: 3168 For those who need to move fast and expand clinical capabilities -- and would love new equipment -- the uCT 550 Advance offers a new fully configured 80-slice CT in up to 2 weeks with routine maintenance and parts and Software Upgrades for Life™ included.
Their ability to show connective tissue is hampered by inadequate sensitivity and the slow process of completing a MRI scan. Semi-solid and solid tissues, including collagen-rich tissues such as calcified ligaments and tendons, as well as periosteum, cortical bone and trabecular bone, provide a weak magnetic resonance signal due to their fast signal decay.
In addition, during the long time it takes took complete a MRI scan, involuntary movements of people negatively affect the clarity of the images, posing a critical challenge in obtaining high-resolution images with diagnostic value.
To address these issues, biomedical engineer Xiaoliang Zhang, a SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University at Buffalo, is leading a team of researchers – from UB, University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; University of Minnesota; Cleveland Clinic; and GE Global Research – to develop advanced MRI techniques.
UB's Department of Biomedical Engineering is a joint program of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Funded by a five-year $3.7 million Bioengineering Research Partnership U01 grant from the National Institutes of Health, the team will develop sensitive imaging tools for morphological and functional characterization of ligaments, tendons and bone, which are essential for studying semi-solid connective tissues in health and disease.
"Through a synergistic bioengineering research partnership, we will develop advanced flexible and wearable imaging hardware, fast imaging techniques and imaging sequences at the ultrahigh field of 7 Tesla to deliver a comprehensive imaging tool," says Zhang.
In addition to these technologies, the team will also investigate the use of ultra-short echo time and zero echo time methods, which have shown unparalleled capability to image solid and semi-solid tissues that are normally invisible in MRI scans.
"We expect this research to have a long-term clinical impact in the management of musculoskeletal system injuries, as well as peripheral vascular diseases, joint/cartilage disorders, and complications associated with diabetes, osteoporosis and rheumatism in humans," says Zhang.
