Quantitative mapping of the intervertebral disc

描述（由申请人提供）：退行性椎间盘疾病（DDD）是一种严重的肌肉骨骼疾病，挑战我们的卫生系统，包括许多临床诊断，如机械性颈椎和腰椎疼痛、退行性脊柱侧凸和椎管狭窄。一种新的MRI脉冲序列设计，用于定量组织诊断，使用魔术回波弛豫映射已经出现-这种技术可能上级目前的T2弛豫映射。这种策略是特别敏感的水分子结合和中间结合的糖胺聚糖在髓核，并可能作为一个早期阶段的报告与DDD相关的结构变化。我们怀疑魔术回波弛豫映射与椎间盘的大分子含量相关，可以检测生物化学和生物力学的变化，DDD形态学的变化之前。我们的长期具体目标包括：（i）在健康和蛋白聚糖耗尽的牛和人类尸体的神经纤维中测量魔术回波弛豫时间的精度和空间分布，（ii）测试魔术回波弛豫时间与组织生物化学和生物力学变化之间的相关性。我们还建议量化的质子-质子偶极耦合常数之间的车厢的椎间盘。与公共卫生的相关性下背痛在美国是一个重大的医疗和经济负担。然而，对于90%的下背痛患者来说，疼痛的来源无法确定，也无法进行具体的诊断。我们采用定量魔术回波弛豫映射观察退行性椎间盘疾病发生的生化和结构变化，希望我们可以量化这些变化更早，甚至比目前的椎间盘造影技术更灵敏。

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.