Magnetic resonance elastography methodology for the evaluation of tissue engineered construct growth.

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Traditional mechanical testing often results in the destruction of the sample, and in the case of long term tissue engineered construct studies, the use of destructive assessment is not acceptable. A proposed alternative is the use of an imaging process called magnetic resonance elastography. Elastography is a nondestructive method for determining the engineered outcome by measuring local mechanical property values (i.e., complex shear modulus), which are essential markers for identifying the structure and functionality of a tissue. As a noninvasive means for evaluation, the monitoring of engineered constructs with imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has seen increasing interest in the past decade. For example, the magnetic resonance (MR) techniques of diffusion and relaxometry have been able to characterize the changes in chemical and physical properties during engineered tissue development. The method proposed in the following protocol uses microscopic magnetic resonance elastography (μMRE) as a noninvasive MR based technique for measuring the mechanical properties of small soft tissues. MRE is achieved by coupling a sonic mechanical actuator with the tissue of interest and recording the shear wave propagation with an MR scanner. Recently, μMRE has been applied in tissue engineering to acquire essential growth information that is traditionally measured

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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