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Updated: Jun 6, 2026

A Method to Study the Correlation Between Local Collagen Structure and Mechanical Properties of Atherosclerotic Plaque Fibrous Tissue
Published on: November 11, 2022
Direct MRI of collagen
Jason Daniel Van Schoor1, Markus Weiger1, Emily Louise Baadsvik1
1Institute for Biomedical Engineering, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
None:
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body and has an important role in healthy tissue as well as in a range of prevalent diseases. Medical research and diagnostics, hence, call for means of mapping collagen in vivo. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a natural candidate for this task, offering full 3D capability and versatile contrast non-invasively. However, collagen has so far been invisible to MRI due to extremely short lifetime of its resonances. Here, we report the direct imaging of collagen in vivo by magnetic resonance on the microsecond scale. The dynamics of resonance signals from collagen were first assessed in samples of bovine tendon and cortical bone. On this basis, imaging was performed at echo times down to 10 microseconds, yielding collagen-specific depiction by echo subtraction. The same approach was then extended for use in vivo, enabling direct collagen imaging of a human forearm. This capability suggests significant promise for biomedical science and clinical use.
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