Abstract
Morphological diagnoses such as MRI are often used for assessment of articular cartilage. The method that the quantitative evaluation of articular cartilage (hardness, thickness, and roughness of the surface) using ultrasonic echo was proposed. However, the relation between ultrasonic echo and matrices in articular cartilage such as collagen is little known. The objective of the present study is to investigate the relation between ultrasonic echo and collagen in articular cartilage using Fourier transform Infrared Spectroscopy. The result of the study showed that the signal intensity from ultrasonic echo depends on the quantity of collagen. Moreover, it confirmed that the signal intensity of articular cartilage reflected the collagen content in the articular cartilage within 150m of depth from the surface of the articular cartilage.
