Abstract
BackgroundThere is paucity of studies applying fat suppressed (FS) technique to T2 mapping to overcome chemical shift artifacts. The purpose of the study is to difference between FS T2 and conventional T2 mapping and reproducibility of FS T2 mapping in the femoral articular cartilage.MethodsEighteen patients who had normal-looking femoral cartilage and underwent knee MRI with conventional T2 and FS T2 mapping were included. T2 values of each mapping were measured by two readers independently from nine regions in the medial femoral condyle (MFC) and lateral femoral condyle (LFC). Each anatomical region was divided by lines at ± 10°, 30°, 50°, 70°, 90°, and 110°. Comparisons of T2 values between conventional and FS T2 mapping were statistically analyzed. The T2 values between FS and conventional T2 mapping in the anterior, central and posterior femoral condyles were compared.ResultsThe overall femoral condyle T2 values from the FS T2 map were significantly lower than those from the conventional T2 map (48.5ms vs. 51.0ms, p < 0.001). The differences in the T2 values between the two maps were significantly different among the three divisions of the LFC (p = 0.009) and MFC (p = 0.031). The intra-class correlation coefficients indicated higher agreement in the FS T2 map than in the conventional T2 map (0.943 vs. 0.872).ConclusionsThe T2 values of knee femoral cartilage are significantly lower on FS T2 mapping than on conventional T2 mapping. FS T2 mapping is a more reproducible method for evaluating knee femoral cartilage.
Highlights
There is paucity of studies applying fat suppressed (FS) technique to T2 mapping to overcome chemical shift artifacts
The degree of agreement was interpreted as excellent if the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was above 0.75, as fair-to-good if the ICC was Results The mean T2 relaxation values of the conventional and FS T2 map in the medial femoral condyle (MFC) and lateral femoral condyle (LFC) are summarized in Table 1 and Fig. 2
The differences between conventional T2 mapping and FS T2 mapping were significant in the − 70° ~ 50° (p = 0.020), -30° ~ -10° (p = 0.001), -10° ~ 10° (p = 0.040), and 30° ~ 50° (p = 0.044) regions
Summary
There is paucity of studies applying fat suppressed (FS) technique to T2 mapping to overcome chemical shift artifacts. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is a widely used imaging modality for assessing morphological changes in articular cartilage This modality has limitations in assessing compositional and ultrastructural changes [1, 2], which are needed for the detection of early-stage osteoarthritis. Chemical shift artifacts are a potential source of error on T2 mapping, occurring at the bone-cartilage interface and cartilage-intraarticular fat tissue interface This can affect the measurement of the T2 relaxation time and the thickness of articular cartilage, especially on 3T MR imaging and for knee joints [13, 14]. There have been a paucity of studies applying the fat suppression technique to T2 mapping as a method to overcome the chemical shift artifacts of conventional T2 mapping of knee cartilage. The purpose of our study is to analyze the difference between FS T2 mapping and conventional T2 mapping and the reproducibility of FS T2 mapping in the knee femoral articular cartilage
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