Knee osteochondral junction imaging using a fast 3D T1-weighted ultrashort echo time cones sequence at 3T |
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| Affiliation: | 1. High-Field MR Centre, Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-Guided Therapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria;2. Institute of Measurement Science, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia;3. Department of Orthopaedics, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, A-1090 Vienna, Austria;4. Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Department of Translational Medicine, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland;5. Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA;6. Division of Radiological Physics, Department of Radiology, University of Basel Hospital, Basel, Switzerland;7. Christian Doppler Laboratory for Clinical Molecular MR Imaging, Vienna, Austria;8. Austrian Cluster for Tissue Regeneration, Austria;9. ETH Zurich, Institute of Translational Medicine, Leopold-Ruzicka-Weg 4, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland;10. High Field Magnetic Resonance, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany;11. Karl-Landsteiner Gesselschaft, St. Pölten, Austria |
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| Abstract: | The osteochondral junction (OCJ) of the knee joint is comprised of multiple tissue components, including a portion of the deep layer cartilage, calcified cartilage, and subchondral bone. The OCJ is of increasing radiological interest as it may be relevant in the early pathogenesis of osteoarthritis (OA). Due to its short transverse relaxation, the OCJ is invisible to clinical MR sequences. The purpose of this study was to develop a fast 3D T1-weighted ultrashort echo time cones sequence with fat saturation (FS-UTE-Cones) for high resolution and high contrast imaging of the OCJ on a clinical 3T scanner. First, numerical simulations were performed to investigate how the flip angle affected the signal intensities and contrasts of both short and long T1 tissues. The results from these simulations demonstrated that higher short T1 contrast could be achieved with higher flip angle. Next, T1 relaxation was measured for the different layers of a human patellar cartilage sample, and the results showed that the deepest layer had a significantly shorter T1 value than other layers. Finally, a healthy knee joint was scanned with different flip angles and the OCJ was highlighted in the T1-weighted FS-UTE-Cones sequence using a flip angle greater than 20°. The clinical T2-weighted and proton density-weighted FSE sequences were also included for comparison, revealing a dark OCJ region. Representative T1-weighted FS-UTE-Cones images of the whole knee of a healthy volunteer showed high signal intensity bands in the OCJ regions of the patella, femur, and tibia. On the other hand, T1-weighted FS-UTE-Cones imaging of the knee joints of OA patients revealed regions with reduction or loss of these high signal intensity bands in the OCJ regions, indicating abnormal OCJ tissue composition. The proposed 3D T1-weighted FS-UTE-Cones sequence with a 3-min scan time may be very useful for demonstrating the involvement of the OCJ regions in early OA. |
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