Free & Bound Water Quantification of Cortical Bone

Jiang Du¹, Won Bae¹, Hermida Juan², Eric Diaz¹, Christine Chung¹, Darryl DLima², Graeme Bydder¹

Bone water occurs at various locations and in different states. It is associated with the mineral phase, bound to the organic matrix, and a significant fraction occurs in more or less free form in the microscopic pores of the Haversian and the lacuna-canalicular systems. A measure of free water concentration can potentially provide a surrogate measure of bone porosity, while a measure of bound water reflects collagen content. Here we propose to use bi-component analysis of UTE images to quantify T2* and fractions of the free and bound water components in cortical bone.