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Challenges and advances in MR imaging of the intervertebral disc — Can the cartilaginous endplate be a biomarker for the disc health?

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Abstract

The cartilaginous endplate is important for the intervertebral disc health, and highly correlated with disc degeneration process. Therefore, understanding morphology and pathophysiology of the cartilaginous endplate is a critical step towards the diagnosis and prognosis of the disc health. This review briefly covers basic anatomy of the intervertebral disc and the cartilaginous endplate and describes how the cartilaginous endplate plays a role in the disc degeneration process. This review also discusses about the current diagnostic tools and methods of the disc health assessment along with its limitations and challenges, followed by recent technical developments in virtue of magnetic resonance imaging. Undoubtedly, magnetic resonance imaging is known to be remarkably beneficial for investigating the intervertebral disc and the cartilaginous endplate, and the number of studies on the cartilaginous endplate utilizing magnetic resonance imaging is increasing in recent years as evaluating the morphology and composition of the cartilaginous endplate can be a good tool for prognosis of the disc degeneration. The state-of-the-art MRI systems and imaging techniques can be a solution to the new findings regard to the disc health and its prognosis employing the cartilaginous endplate as a biomarker.

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  1. GE Healthcare, MR Systems, Florence, SC, USA

    Sung M. Moon

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Moon, S.M. Challenges and advances in MR imaging of the intervertebral disc — Can the cartilaginous endplate be a biomarker for the disc health?. Biomed. Eng. Lett. 4, 19–24 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13534-014-0123-5

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