DTI of trabecular bone marrow

The development of NMR diffusion imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has offered the possibility of studying the porous structures beyond anatomical imaging. In fact, random molecular motions, within tissue components, probe tissue microstructures. Up to now, the DTI method was mainly used to investigate cerebral morphology and study white matter diseases. In this study, it has been applied to trabecular bone marrow analysis to obtain structural information on spongy bone tissue. Our first results show that DTI could represent an important tool in studying the microstructural architecture of the trabecular bone as well as the microarchitecture of porous media. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.