72 mm birdcage coil

An imaging chamber (Fig. 1), fabricated to fi within a 72-mm birdcage coil (Bruker Inc., Billerica, MA), was used for disk imaging within a 4.7 Tesla (T) horizontal bore magnet (BioSpec, Bruker BioSpin Inc., Billerica, MA). A brass screw threaded to the chamber’s top endcap allowed the application of compressive displacements to the disk within the magnet that were pre-calibrated from the mechanical test (Table 1).

The disc was thawed for four hours at room temperature and was placed in a custom-made imaging chamber. To decrease susceptibility effects at the tissue’s surface (Benveniste et al., 2000 (link)) and prevent de- hydration, the chamber was filled with Fomblin Y (Sigma-Aldrich Co., St. Louis, MO), a perfluoropolyether-based lubricant that does not in- duce any MR-signal and was reported to cause no damage to tissues (Miller et al., 2011 (link)). Using a 72 mm birdcage coil (Bruker Biospin MRI GmbH, Ettlingen, Germany), the disc was imaged in a 9.4 T horizontal bore magnet (BioSpec, Bruker Biospin MRI GmbH, Ettlingen, Germany) with the disc’s cranial-caudal axis aligned along the axis of the magnet. Axial images (slice thickness: 0.5 mm, in-plane resolution: 0.2 mm, matrix: 270×290, 96 Slices) were acquired using the following proto- cols (Alkalay et al., 2015 ):