Moreover, the merged yellow fluorescent dots demonstrated that almost of Tat-conjugated Fe3O4@SiO2-Amino NPs accumulated in nucleus zone, indicating that Fe3O4@SiO2-Tat NPs can enter into cell nucleus.
For each disc, they detected the nucleus zone and quantified the parameters "DX", "H", "SM" and "PSM".
This study revealed modifications in the distribution of the MR signal intensity within the nucleus zone of the lumbar intervertebral disc.
The T2-weighted MRI images did not show qualitative differences in the distribution of the signal intensity within the nucleus zone of these patients with scoliosis or spondylolisthesis.
For all these authors, the distribution of the MR parameters within the nucleus zone or intervertebral disc is not quantitatively analysed.
New parameters allowing analysing the distribution of the signal intensity within the nucleus zone of the lumbar intervertebral disc were defined and quantified.
The only possible source of dispersion was the manual choice of the nucleus zone outline in the segmentation tool of Matlab.
The displacements of the IVD components under various movements of the spine were also measured from MR images, highlighting significant correlations between the nucleus zone migration and the flexion-extension movements of the spine [ 23- 25], or correlations between nucleus zone migration and intervertebral disc wedging in scoliosis [ 6, 26].
The decrease of "PSM" values for scoliosis reflects a shift of the nucleus zone into the convex side of the scoliotic curve and could be related to the biochemical changes observed in the intervertebral discs with scoliosis.
However, the quantitative analysis proposed in this study showed significant differences in the distribution of the MR signal intensity within the nucleus zone of intervertebral discs due to the pathology and its severity.
