Biophysics and Biochemistry of Cartilage by NMR and MRI
CHAPTER 17: The Critical Role of High Imaging Resolution in MRI of Cartilage—The MRI Microscope
-
Published:09 Nov 2016
-
Special Collection: 2016 ebook collectionSeries: New Developments in NMR
Yang Xia, 2016. "The Critical Role of High Imaging Resolution in MRI of Cartilage—The MRI Microscope", Biophysics and Biochemistry of Cartilage by NMR and MRI, Yang Xia, Konstantin Momot
Download citation file:
A talk by Richard Feynman on December 29, 1959 at an American Physical Society meeting has been considered by many to be a seminal event in the history of nano-science. In his talk, titled There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Dr Feynman said “It is very easy to answer many of these fundamental biological questions; you just look at the thing! … Unfortunately, the present microscope sees at a scale which is just a bit too crude. Make the microscope one hundred times more powerful, and many problems of biology would be made very much easier. I exaggerate, of course, but the biologists would surely be very thankful to you …” (The editing inside the quotation marks is mine.) If we replaced the words “biological” and “microscope” with “osteoarthritic” and “magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)”, respectively, the same statements could become equally inspirational for the readers of this chapter, which justifies the need to have high spatial resolutions in MRI of articular cartilage. This chapter also suggests a sweet spot—microscopic MRI of animal models of osteoarthritis—that bypasses the major limitations in clinical MRI of arthritic diseases.