Michael Jonathan Thrippleton1, Kirsty Irene
Munro1, Mark E. Bastin2, Maurits A. Jansen2,
Gavin D. Merrifield2, Scott I K Semple3, Anca Oniscu1,
Andrew W. Horne1, Alistair R. Williams1, Graham
McKillop4, Ian Marshall2, David E. Newby, 3,5,
Hilary OD Critchley1
1Centre for Reproductive Biology,
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Lothian, United Kingdom; 2Department
of Medical Physics, University of Edinburgh; 3Clinical Research
Imaging Centre, University of Edinburgh; 4Department of Radiology,
Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh; 5Centre for Cardiovascular Science,
University of Edinburgh
We
are developing MR biomarkers for assessing the mechanism and effectiveness of
new medical treatments for uterine fibroids benign growths of uterine
muscle, present in up to 70% of women of reproductive age. In this abstract,
we describe the results of development work aimed at probing the water
diffusion properties of the ex-vivo fibroid uterus at 7 T; we measure the
water diffusion parameters of fibroid tissue subtypes and compare diffusion
eigenvector maps with macroscopic tissue appearance.