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. 2023 Mar 21:14:1148345.
doi: 10.3389/fendo.2023.1148345. eCollection 2023.

MRI-based porosity index (PI) and suppression ratio (SR) in the tibial cortex show significant differences between normal, osteopenic, and osteoporotic female subjects

Saeed Jerban  1   2   3 , Yajun Ma  1   2 , Dina Moazamian  1 , Jiyo Athertya  1 , Sophia Dwek  1 , Hyungseok Jang  1   2 , Gina Woods  4 , Christine B Chung  1   2 , Eric Y Chang  1   2 , Jiang Du  1   2
Affiliations

MRI-based porosity index (PI) and suppression ratio (SR) in the tibial cortex show significant differences between normal, osteopenic, and osteoporotic female subjects

Saeed Jerban et al. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). .

Abstract

Introduction: Ultrashort echo time (UTE) MRI enables quantitative assessment of cortical bone. The signal ratio in dual-echo UTE imaging, known as porosity index (PI), as well as the signal ratio between UTE and inversion recovery UTE (IR-UTE) imaging, known as the suppression ratio (SR), are two rapid UTE-based bone evaluation techniques developed to reduce the time demand and cost in future clinical studies. The goal of this study was to investigate the performance of PI and SR in detecting bone quality differences between subjects with osteoporosis (OPo), osteopenia (OPe), and normal bone (Normal).

Methods: Tibial midshaft of fourteen OPe (72 ± 6 years old), thirty-one OPo (72 ± 6 years old), and thirty-seven Normal (36 ± 19 years old) subjects were scanned using dual-echo UTE and IR-UTE sequences on a clinical 3T scanner. Measured PI, SR, and bone thickness were compared between OPo, OPe, and normal bone (Normal) subjects using the Kruskal-Wallis test by ranks. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were calculated between dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) T-score and UTE-MRI results.

Results: PI was significantly higher in the OPo group compared with the Normal (24.1%) and OPe (16.3%) groups. SR was significantly higher in the OPo group compared with the Normal (41.5%) and OPe (21.8%) groups. SR differences between the OPe and Normal groups were also statistically significant (16.2%). Cortical bone was significantly thinner in the OPo group compared with the Normal (22.0%) and OPe (13.0%) groups. DEXA T-scores in subjects were significantly correlated with PI (R=-0.32), SR (R=-0.50), and bone thickness (R=0.51).

Discussion: PI and SR, as rapid UTE-MRI-based techniques, may be useful tools to detect and monitor bone quality changes, in addition to bone morphology, in individuals affected by osteoporosis.

Keywords: MRI; bone quality; cortical bone; osteoporosis; ultrashort echo time (UTE).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Generated PI, SR, and bone thickness maps for exemplary subjects from the Normal group (first column, 28-year-old female), the OPe group (second column, 78-year-old female), and the OPo group (third column, 85-year-old female). PI and SR were observed in the following ascending order: NormalOPe>OPo.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Boxplots of PI, SR, and bone thickness in the Normal, OPe, and OPo groups. Average, median, SD, and first and third quartile values are indicated in the boxplots.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Scatterplots and linear trendlines of DEXA T-score on PI, SR, and bone thickness. R2 values were calculated from Spearman’s correlation coefficients.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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