Current status and trends in quantitative MRI study of intervertebral disc degeneration: a bibliometric and clinical study analysis

Background: Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has the function of noninvasive quantitative evaluation, providing unique advantages in intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) assessment. Although studies exploring the field for domestic and international scholars are increasingly being published, there is a lack of systematic scientific measurement and clinical analysis of the literature in this field.Methods: Articles published from the respective database establishment to September 30, 2022, were obtained from the Web of Science core collection (WOSCC), PubMed database, and ClinicalTrials.gov. The scientometric software (VOSviewer 1.6.18, CiteSpace 6.1.R3, Scimago Graphica, and R software) were used for bibliometric and knowledge graph visualization analysis.Results: We included 651 articles from the WOSCC database and 3 clinical studies from ClinicalTrials. gov for literature analysis. With the passage of time, the number of articles in this field gradually increased. The United States and China were the top 2 countries in terms of the number of publications and citations, and Chinese publications lacked international cooperation and exchange. The author with the most publications was Schleich C, while the author with the most citations was Borthakur A, who have both made important contributions to research in this field. The journal publishing the most relevant articles was Spine, and the journal with the most mean times cited per study was Radiology, both of which are the authoritative journals in this field. Keyword co-occurrence, clustering, timeline view, and emergent analysis revealed that recent studies in this field have focused on quantifying the biochemical components of the degenerated intervertebral disc (IVD). There were few available clinical studies. The more recent clinical studies mainly used molecular imaging technology to explore the relationship between different quantitative MRI sequence values and the IVD biomechanical environment and biochemical components content.Conclusions: The study provided a knowledge map of quantitative MRI for IDD research in terms of countries, authors, journals, cited literature, and keywords through bibliometric analysis, and systematically sorted the current status, hotspots, and clinical research features in the field to provide a reference for future research.