Added Value of MRI Knee Cartigram in Assessment of Anterior Knee Pain in Comparison to Conventional Standard MRI

Abstract

Background Osteoarthritis (OA) is a multi-tissue, multi-factorial disease and worldwide a major cause of disability resulting from reduced joint mobility and function. Progressive loss of hyaline cartilage is one of the hallmark features of osteoarthritis, initiated by a loss of proteoglycans and an increase in water content, followed by a loss of type II collagen and a change in collagen fiber orientation. Objective To evaluate the role of T2 mapping in detection of degenerative changes in articular cartilage of knee joint as compared to standard clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 1.5T. Patients and Methods From April 2020 to November 2020, this prospective Study was done to use T2 mapping to visualize the articular cartilage of the knee on 1.5 T MR Scanner using special software to evaluate the efficiency Of T2 mapping to detect cartilage lesions. The material of this study included 380 patients. The study includes all of them come complaining of knee pain and 2 of them had previous minor knee trauma, each patient had a single MRI exanimation including conventional MRI routine protocol and added a single complementary T2 mapping. Results there were significant differences between T2 mapping and conventional MRI sequence in the ability to detect cartilage degeneration as T2 mapping was capable of detecting all lesions that were visible on the clinical MRI. Moreover, T2 mapping showed more cartilage lesions than clinical MRI T2 mapping showed more cartilage lesions than clinical MRI, and in T2 maps the lesions appeared generally wider. This proposes that T2 mapping is feasible in the clinical setting and may reveal cartilage lesions not seen on the standard knee MRI. Conclusion Our results suggest that T2 mapping is an interesting MRI sequence for the exploration of patients articular cartilage in and should be included in the routine protocol if cartilage pathology is suspecting as it may improve the diagnostic accuracy of MRI for focal chondral lesions, and should help decide whether and MR-arthrography or CT-arthrography is necessary.