This talk presents ongoing work at the Medical College of Wisconsin that is seeking to develop technical methodology for kinematic tracking and profiling of free-moving wrist carpal bones. The kinematic profiles derived from this technology consist of inter-carpal geometric metrics computed and tracked during free wrist motion.  Such metrics are hypothesized to be potentially valuable for diagnosis and management of joint dysfunction.  The advanced 4D MRI protocol deployed for this application captures frames of unconstrained moving joints which are registered to a high-resolution fixed volume using a novel slab-to-volume boundary registration method.   Fiducial points identified or computed on high resolution static images are then tracked using the dynamic time series to generate time-domain signals indicative of independent and relative carpal bone movement.  Preliminary concept demonstrations and analysis of derived kinematic profiles will be presented and discussed. 

Kevin M. Koch, PhD, is Professor and Vice Chair of Research in Radiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Koch’s research over the past 20 years has spanned a wide variety of MRI technical development efforts. Early in his career, Dr. Koch led to the conceptualization, development, clinical evaluation, and commercialization of a novel approach to MRI metal artifact reduction. Variations of this approach to MRI acquisition, known as 3D Multi-Spectral Imaging (3D-MSI), are commercially available on most major imaging vendor platforms.  Dr. Koch and his research group continue to develop and translate novel imaging capabilities to clinical applications, specifically focusing on the generation of new advances of multi-spectral imaging technologies in orthopaedic, spine, and neurological imaging.  His team has also focused on advanced quantitative technology development in neurological imaging, particularly the development and use of quantitative susceptibility mapping.   Finally, Dr. Koch and his group have recently started exploring the use of dynamic MRI of moving joints to quantify orthopaedic health.