Collagen Fibre Direction Estimation Using a Prototype Rotatable Low Field Scanner

Motivation: Certain types of tendon and ligament pathologies are hard to diagnose using conventional MRI. This can lead to invasive procedures or under-informed decisions regarding treatment. Goal(s): The goal of this research is to develop a novel scanner and image analysis techniques in order to assess tendon/ligament structure and health non-invasively. Approach: Tendons/ligaments contain collagen fibres that produce different signal intensities at different B0 orientations, this is the "magic angle effect". We have developed a rotatable scanner to reorient B0 to exploit this effect. Results: This study shows successful tendon structure estimation of a bovine PCL using our scanner and image processing techniques. Impact: The results of this study provide a foundation to begin testing our methodology in-vivo. Our successful fibre estimation in a bovine PCL has shown our scanner captures the magic angle effect and our processing techniques can estimate collagen fibre directions.