Functional imaging of intratissue strain in articular cartilage provides an opportunity to probe the healthy or diseased state of the tissue. We utilized displacement encoded MRI to document the increase in deformation following creation of a critical sized femoral defect in a large animal model ex vivo. Strain heterogeneity indicated that the implant replacement is critical to long-term repair success and restoration of physiological cartilage strain and mechanical function. This study represents a crucial step toward the evaluation of biomechanical imaging biomarkers to evaluate tissue damage, repair, and regeneration in the intact joint of a clinically-relevant and translational animal model.
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