Murine articular cartilage morphology and compositional quantification with high resolution cationic contrast-enhanced ?CT.

ABSTRACT: Articular cartilage lines the load-bearing surfaces of long bones and undergoes compositional and structural degeneration during osteoarthritis progression. Contrast enhanced microcomputed tomography (?CT) is being applied to a variety of preclinical models, including the mouse, to map structural and compositional properties in 3-D. The thinness (?30-50??m) and high cellularity of mouse articular cartilage presents a significant imaging challenge. Our group previously showed that mouse articular cartilage and proteoglycan (PG) content can be assessed by ?CT with the ioxagalate-based contrast agent Hexabrix, but the voxel size used (6??m) was deemed to be barely adequate. The objective of the present study is to assess the utility of a novel contrast agent, CA4+, to quantify mouse articular cartilage morphology and composition with high resolution ?CT imaging (3??m voxels) and to compare the sensitivity of CA4+ and Hexabrix to detect between-group differences. While both contrast agents are iodine-based, Hexabrix is anionic and CA4+ is cationic so they interact differently with negatively charged PGs. With CA4+, a strong correlation was found between non-calcified articular cartilage thickness measurements made with histology and ?CT (R2 ?=?0.72, p?

SUBMITTER: Mashiatulla M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5671366 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature