Can Bound & Mobile Bone Water Be Distinguished by T2* at 9.4T?

Henry H. Ong¹, Felix W. Wehrli¹

Differentiating bound and mobile bone water (BW) may provide valuable insight in bone health and microarchitecture. Previous reports have used T2* relaxometry to quantify bound and mobile BW at 0.6T and 3T. Here, we investigate the potential to quantify bound and mobile BW with T2* relaxometry at 9.4T. We compared 3-component exponential fits of FIDs from human cortical bone specimens with measurements of BW concentration, porosity, and bound and mobile BW fractions unambiguously quantified by deuterium NMR. The results show that at this field strength the 3-components primarily correlate with collagen protons and mobile BW but not with bound BW