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Tendon laxity can cause pain and increased injury risk. Quantitative MRI using Ultrashort echo time (UTE) sequences can quantify both short and long T2* water components in tendons. This study evaluates the sensitivity of UTE-T2* mapping with a bi-exponential fit model to tendon laxity, in the Achilles tendon under tension and relaxation. T2*long values seemed to increase as tendon load increased, while T2*short values were the opposite. These changes may be caused by water movement due to loading and changes in fiber orientation due to tendon slackening.
Goyal et al. (Wed,) studied this question.