Henry H. Ong1, Alexander C. Wright1, Suzanne L. Wehrli2, Catherine E. Jones1, Felix W. Wehrli1
1Laboratory for Structural NMR Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Phildelphia, PA, USA; 2NMR Core Facility, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Fatty acid triglycerides (FAT) are ubiquitous in nature and understanding their physico-chemical properties provides insight into their function. FAT diffusion in marrow is of interest as bone-marrow susceptibility effects are exploited to assess trabecular bone architecture in several approaches that make specific assumptions on the rate of FAT diffusion. To the best of our knowledge, FAT diffusion data have not been reported previously. Using pulsed-gradient spin-echo NMR, we report FAT ADC in intact yellow bone marrow (ADC~10-8 cm2/s) to be three orders of magnitude slower than that of free water by means of a custom-built 50T/m z-gradient/RF coil set.