Professor Yang Xia Studies Cartilage Using MRI

"The degradation of articular cartilage is a hallmark in musculoskeletal diseases, such as osteoarthritis, which affects the majority of the senior population. Due to the lack of specific and sensitive markers to detect subtle changes in the tissue, no routine procedure is currently available to assess non-destructively the functional, structural, and biochemical properties during the early stages of the tissue degradation. One major obstacle that has prevented any successful development of an early detection procedure is the complex molecular and morphological structures of the tissue."