Understanding how the joints and bones in the wrist move is an important first step towards designing appropriate treatment options and surgical interventions. A recently funded study led by Kevin Koch, PhD, at the Medical College of Wisconsin, will explore the best methods for capturing movements in wrist joints using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This study will focus on understanding how to capture images of healthy wrists which will then be used to give guidance for how clinicians can use MRI techniques to view damaged wrists.
Brooke Slavens, PhD, an Associate Professor in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is the Co-Investigator on this project. Her research team will lead the validation of image capture for this research. Slavens’s Mobility Lab in the Innovation Accelerator building is home to specialized motion-capture technology from Vicon. This technology will be used to document wrist movement in 50 healthy subjects to compare with the MRI data. This work holds important promise for faster and more accurate diagnosis and treatment plans for orthopaedic patients in the future.
This study is titled “Enabling Kinematic Joint Profiling Using MRI” and funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases for two years.