Haihui Cao1,2, Jerome Ackerman2,3, Melvin Glimcher1,2, Yaotang Wu1,2
1Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; 2Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 3Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
Quantitative computed tomography (QCT) is widely used for bone mineral density (BMD) measurements. The variable adipose content of the marrow has been cited to be a major source of measurement error. Knowing the actual marrow composition would help to correct this error. This preliminary study demonstrated that partial WASPI (suppressing either water or fat, but not both at the same time) can provide the information of the ratio of fat/water content in marrow accurately. Partial WASPI measurement can potentially applied in vivo, with an advantage of MRI images registered to QCT images three dimensionally.