Diffusion tensor imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy assessment of cancellous bone quality in femoral neck of healthy, osteopenic and osteoporotic subjects at 3T: Preliminary experience

We assessed the potential of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in combination with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-1-MRS), in cancellous bone quality evaluation of the femoral neck in postmenopausal women. Introduction: DTI allows for non-invasive microarchitectural characterization of heterogeneous tissue. In this work we hypothesized that DTI parameters mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) of bone marrow water, can provide information about microstructural changes that occur with the development of osteoporosis disease. Because osteoporosis is associated with increased bone marrow fat content, which in principal can alter DTI parameters, the goal of this study was to examine the potential of MD and FA, in combination with bone marrow fat fraction (FF), to discriminate between healthy, osteopenic and osteoporotic subjects, classified according to DXA criteria.