Dr. David Wilson and Dr. Bas Masri, along with co-applicants Piotr Kozlowski and Alex Rauscher, were awarded an Arthritis Society Strategic Operating Grant of more than $300,000 over 3 years for their research project, Imaging measures of cartilage mechanics.
“We can’t currently measure how cartilage (a soft tissue covering the bones in joints like the knee and hip) is loaded in living people. This is important because osteoarthritis—a common, painful and debilitating joint disease—could be better treated and prevented if we knew more about joint loading.”
The grant will support a highly collaborative project to investigate non-invasive methods to measure cartilage mechanics using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with a focus on UBC’s unique open MR facility.
The funding will support research projects for trainees Jessica Kupper and Emily Sullivan and provide critical research expertise from engineer Amy Phillips, MR physicist Andrew Yung, and imaging scientist Honglin Zhang.
UBC’s Upright Open MRI
The Upright Open MRI is a UBC shared research platform funded in part by the Faculty of Medicine, the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, and the Office of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation.
The Upright Open MRI Research Steering Committee, in charge of ensuring the sustainability of the platform, is led by Dr. David Wilson, who is the Scientific Advisor of the platform. Other members of the Steering Committee include faculty members, representatives of VPRI and expert staff.
