High Resolution In-Vivo Measurement of Sodium T1 of Human Knee Cartilage

Rebecca Emily Feldman¹, Robb Stobbe¹, Ander Watts¹, Christian Beaulieu¹

Sodium MRI is a promising diagnostic technique for assessing cartilage health in vivo. The measurement of the sodium T1 for tissues in the knee is important for the development of optimized pulse sequences. Literature provides in vitro T1 values for sodium in human and bovine cartilage, but no in-vivo values. We have measured sodium T1 for cartilage, blood, and synovial fluid in-vivo at 4.7 T for five healthy subjects. We then use the differences in those T1 values to obtain a high-resolution inversion-recovery fluid-suppressed image of human knee cartilage.