Dimitrios C. Karampinos1, Huanzhou Yu2,
Ann Shimakawa2, Eric T. Han2, Thomas M. Link1,
Sharmila Majumdar1, Roland Krug1
1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging,
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Applied
Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States
There
is some evidence that osteoporosis is associated with increased marrow fat
content as well as an accelerated conversion from red marrow to yellow
(fatty) marrow with age. In this work, we investigated the marrow fat
composition in the proximal femur in
vivo using IDEAL gradient echo imaging. 3-point IDEAL FGRE hip images of
six healthy subjects were acquired and water-fat separation was performed
using multi-peak IDEAL. The average fat fraction and standard deviation were
determined in three different regions of interest (femoral head, greater
trochanter and neck). Significant differences in marrow fat content were
identified between the three regions for all subjects.