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- Karjalainen, Jouni, et al.
(författare)
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Dipolar Relaxation of Water Protons in the Vicinity of a Collagen-like Peptide
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Physical Chemistry B. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1520-6106 .- 1520-5207. ; 126:13, s. 2538-2551
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging is one of the few available methods for noninvasive diagnosis of degenerative changes in articular cartilage. The clinical use of the imaging data is limited by the lack of a clear association between structural changes at the molecular level and the measured magnetic relaxation times. In anisotropic, collagen-containing tissues, such as articular cartilage, the orientation dependency of nuclear magnetic relaxation can obscure the content of the images. Conversely, if the molecular origin of the phenomenon would be better understood, it would provide opportunities for diagnostics as well as treatment planning of degenerative changes in these tissues. We study the magnitude and orientation dependence of the nuclear magnetic relaxation due to dipole-dipole coupling of water protons in anisotropic, collagenous structures. The water-collagen interactions are modeled with molecular dynamics simulations of a small collagen-like peptide dissolved in water. We find that in the vicinity of the collagen-like peptide, the dipolar relaxation of water hydrogen nuclei is anisotropic, which can result in orientation-dependent relaxation times if the water remains dose to the peptide. However, the orientation-dependency of the relaxation is different from the commonly observed magic-angle phenomenon in articular cartilage MRI.
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| 2. |
- Orozco, Gustavo A, et al.
(författare)
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A musculoskeletal finite element model of rat knee joint for evaluating cartilage biomechanics during gait
- 2022
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Ingår i: PLoS Computational Biology. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1553-7358. ; 18:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abnormal loading of the knee due to injuries or obesity is thought to contribute to the development of osteoarthritis (OA). Small animal models have been used for studying OA progression mechanisms. However, numerical models to study cartilage responses under dynamic loading in preclinical animal models have not been developed. Here we present a musculoskeletal finite element model of a rat knee joint to evaluate cartilage biomechanical responses during a gait cycle. The rat knee joint geometries were obtained from a 3-D MRI dataset and the boundary conditions regarding loading in the joint were extracted from a musculoskeletal model of the rat hindlimb. The fibril-reinforced poroelastic (FRPE) properties of the rat cartilage were derived from data of mechanical indentation tests. Our numerical results showed the relevance of simulating anatomical and locomotion characteristics in the rat knee joint for estimating tissue responses such as contact pressures, stresses, strains, and fluid pressures. We found that the contact pressure and maximum principal strain were virtually constant in the medial compartment whereas they showed the highest values at the beginning of the gait cycle in the lateral compartment. Furthermore, we found that the maximum principal stress increased during the stance phase of gait, with the greatest values at midstance. We anticipate that our approach serves as a first step towards investigating the effects of gait abnormalities on the adaptation and degeneration of rat knee joint tissues and could be used to evaluate biomechanically-driven mechanisms of the progression of OA as a consequence of joint injury or obesity.
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