Biexponential T1ρ relaxation mapping of human knee cartilage in vivo at 3 T

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The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of biexponential T1ρ relaxation mapping of human knee cartilage in vivo. A three-dimensional, customized, turbo-flash sequence was used to acquire T1ρ -weighted images from healthy volunteers employing a standard 3-T MRI clinical scanner. A series of T1ρ -weighted images was fitted using monoexponential and biexponential models with two- and four-parametric non-linear approaches, respectively. Non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U-statistical tests were used to evaluate the regional relaxation and gender differences, respectively, with a level of significance of P=0.05. Biexponential relaxations were detected in the cartilage of all volunteers. The short and long relaxation components of T1ρ were estimated to be 6.9 and 51.0ms, respectively. Similarly, the fractions of short and long T1ρ were 37.6% and 62.4%, respectively. The monoexponential relaxation of T1ρ was 32.6ms. The experiments showed good repeatability with a coefficient of variation (CV) of less than 20%. A biexponential relaxation model showed a better fit than a monoexponential model to the T1ρ relaxation decay in knee cartilage. Biexponential T1ρ components could potentially be used to increase the specificity to detect early osteoarthritis by the measurement of different water compartments and their fractions.