Quantitative mapping of the intervertebral disc

描述(申请人提供)：退行性腰椎间盘疾病(DDD)是一种严重的肌肉骨骼疾病，挑战我们的健康系统，包括一些临床诊断，如机械性颈椎和腰椎疼痛，退行性脊柱侧弯和椎管狭窄。一种新的用于定量组织诊断的磁共振脉冲序列设计已经出现，使用魔术回波松弛映射-该技术可能优于目前的T2松弛映射。这一策略对与髓核中的糖胺多聚糖结合和中间结合的水分子特别敏感，并可能作为与DDD相关的结构变化的早期报告。我们怀疑魔术回声松弛映射与椎间盘的大分子含量相关，并可以检测到在DDD形态变化之前的生化和生物力学变化。我们的长期目标包括(I)在健康和蛋白多糖缺乏的牛和人身体标本中测量魔术回声松弛时间的精确度和空间分布，(Ii)测试魔术回声松弛时间与组织生化和生物力学观察到的变化之间的相关性。我们还建议量化椎间隙间的质子-质子偶极耦合常数。与公共健康相关的下腰痛在美国是一个重大的医疗和经济负担。然而，在90%的下腰痛患者中，无法确定疼痛的来源，也不可能做出具体的诊断。我们使用定量魔术回声弛豫图来观察退行性腰椎间盘疾病过程中发生的生化和结构变化，希望我们可以比目前的椎间盘造影技术更早地量化这些变化，并具有更高的灵敏度。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Degenerative disk disease (DDD) is a serious musculoskeletal disorder challenging our health system and includes a number of clinical diagnoses such as mechanical cervical and lumbar pain, degenerative scoliosis and spinal stenosis. A novel MRI pulse sequence design for quantitative tissue diagnosis using magic echo relaxation mapping has emerged - this technique may be superior to current T2 relaxation mapping. This strategy is particularly sensitive to water molecules bound and intermediately bound toglycosaminoglycans in the nucleus pulposus and may serve as an early-stage reporter of structural changes associated with DDD. We suspect that magic echo relaxation mapping correlates with the macromolecular content of the intervertebral disc and can detect biochemical and biomechanical changes that precede DDD morphological changes. Our long-term specific aims include (i) a measurement of the precision and spatial distribution of magic echo relaxation times in both healthy and proteoglycan-depleted bovine and human cadaveric specimans, (ii) a test for correlation between magic echo relaxation times and changes observed in tissue biochemistry andbiomechanics. We also propose to quantify the proton-proton dipolar coupling constant among compartments of the intervertebral disc. Relevance to public health lower back pain is a significant medical and economical burden in the United States. For among 90% of individuals with lower back pain, however, the source of the pain cannot be identified and a specific diagnosis is not possible. We employ quantitative magic echo relaxation mapping to observe the biochemical and structural changes that occur during degenerative disc disease in the hope that we may quantify these changes earlier and with even greater sensitivity than the current discographic techniques.