Henry H. Ong1, Felix W. Wehrli1
1Laboratory for Structural NMR Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA
NMR and MRI are powerful tools for non-destructive study of bone water, which can provide insight into bone micro- and nanostructure. However, the MR signal of bone is comprised of several proton populations including collagen, collagen-associated water, and water within the Haversian and lacuno-canalicular system. Double-quantum filtered (DQF) NMR may be useful for characterizing the collagen-associated water contribution to the overall MR signal. Here, we studied lamb tibia cortical bone with 1H and 2H in-phase DQF-NMR and report dipolar and quadrupolar splittings from bone, which we attribute to collagen backbone and collagen-associated water protons, respectively.