PhD Fellow Bo Eitel Seiferheld

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a multifactorial degenerative joint disease that encompasses bones, cartilage, ligaments, menisci, and joint fluid within the joint capsule. Therefore, to get a better understanding, thorough investigations are needed on all levels of the disease. Thus, the PhD candidate Bo Eitel Seiferheld will investigate how the cartilage responds to loading and how the cartilage loading capacities change due to disease progression.

To measure the cartilage, he will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in collaboration with Aalborg University Hospital. Briefly, MRI is a non-invasive imagining technology that produces detailed 2D anatomical images of the musculoskeletal system (e.g., cartilage, menisci, ligaments, bones etc.) in the anatomical planes, which is hereafter post-processed into 3D geometries.

Lastly, mechanically loading the human knee joint during MRI scanning requires a human-scaled MRI-compatible loading apparatus. Therefore, this device will mechanically load the human knee joint during scanning to enable in vivo measurements of cartilage tissue response under various loading conditions.

This developed workflow to estimate in vivo responses of the cartilage from stacks of various loaded and unloaded MRI scans will investigate differences between healthy individuals and patients suffering from KOA. These results will pinpoint key differences and can be useful as a biomarker for early KOA detection Additionally, the results help current ongoing modelling approaches, where` knowledge of the tissue response is necessary for correct implementation.

Bo holds a Master of Science degree from the Health Science and Technology Department within Sports Technology at Aalborg University and has experience in conducting experiments with humans. You can read more about Bo’s contribution on Aalborg University’s homepage here.