The First Study of Cartilage by Magnetic Resonance: A Historical Account.

Objective: To recap the historical journey leading to the first cartilage research article using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), published in 1955 by 2 Swedish researchers, Erik Odeblad and Gunnar Lindström.

Design: Extensive Internet search utilizing both English and Swedish websites, and reading the dissertations available at the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) and via interlibrary loans at Oakland University (Michigan, USA).

Results: Using a primitive NMR instrument that Lindström built for his graduate research at the Nobel Institute for Physics (Stockholm, Sweden), Odeblad and Lindström studied the characteristics of the NMR signal in calf cartilage. The authors wrote, "In cartilage and fibrous tissue, in which the proton signals probably arise from highly viscous water with short spin-lattice relaxation time, the signals were also larger than would correspond to the water content." The authors speculated the signal differences between water and biological tissues could be attributed to the absorption and organization of the water molecules to the proteins in the tissue, which was remarkably accurate.

Conclusions: It is quite certain that Odeblad and Lindström published the first biomedical study using NMR in 1955. In this article, cartilage and a number of other biological tissues were examined for the first time using NMR.