Reproducibility of the quantitative assessment of cartilage morphology and trabecular bone structure with magnetic resonance imaging at 7 T

Abstract

To assess the reproducibility of quantitative measurements of cartilage morphology and trabecular bone structure of the knee at 7 T, high-resolution sagittal spoiled gradient-echo images and highresolution axial fully refocused steady-state free-precession (SSFP) images from six healthy volunteers were acquired with a 7-T scanner. The subjects were repositioned between repeated scans to test the reproducibility of the measurements. The reproducibility of each measurement was evaluated using the coefficient(s) of variation (CV). The computed CV were 1.13% and 1.55% for cartilage thickness and cartilage volume, respectively, and were 2.86%, 1.07%, 2.27% and 3.30% for apparent bone volume over total volume fraction (app.BV/TV), apparent trabecular number (app.Tb.N), apparent trabecular separation (app.Tb.Sp) and apparent trabecular thickness (app.Tb.Th), respectively. The results demonstrate that quantitative assessment of cartilage morphology and trabecular bone structure is reproducible at 7 T and motivates future musculoskeletal applications seeking the high-field strength's superior signal-to-noise ratio.

VALIDATION OF DELAYED GADOLINIUM‐ENHANCED MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING OF CARTILAGE AND T2 MAPPING FOR QUANTIFYING DISTAL METACARPUS/METATARSUS CARTILAGE THICKNESS IN THOROUGHBRED RACEHORSES

“…28 Another previous human study reported good repeatability for cartilage thickness measurements using a 7T scanner, with a coefficient of variation of 1.13%. 29 Good repeatability of MRI cartilage thickness measurements was also found in a study of asymptomatic human hip joints. 30 Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of human cadaver femoral head cartilage thickness measurements from 3D-spoiled gradient echo pulse sequences have been found to be very high (<0.98) 31 and highresolution MRI cartilage thickness evaluation was also found to have good correlation with direct imaging analysis of surgically removed cartilage.…”

“…This finding was similar to previously published findings. [29][30][31] One limitation of the current study was that no inter-observer comparisons were made. However, previous studies have found good inter-observer repeatability for MRI measurements.…”

In vivo characterization of morphological properties and contact areas of the rat cartilage derived from high-resolution MRI

“…The OA process was simulated and supervised [18]. Rat models were selected due to their reasonable time life for observing the OA process from the beginning to the end [12]. High-resolution MRI technique was used due to its non-invasive characteristic [8] and especially its quality for analyzing small joint of animal models [13].…”

“…Furthermore, morphological (volume, thickness, and curvature) properties and contact area were analyzed and quantified by using geometrical computing techniques. In literature, morphological assessment (volume and thickness) was largely studied [6,[8][9][10]12,25]. Contact area properties of the cartilage were also quantified [16,26].…”

“…Moreover, computational models derived from anatomical images and geometrical computing techniques showed their robustness in time consuming as well as in computing accuracy for morphological cartilage characterization [9][10]. Furthermore, high-field MRI specific sequences were recently used to improve the quality of the contrast between cartilages and surrounding tissues as well as the precision of the morphological assessment in human and animal cartilage models [11][12][13]. However, according to the best of our knowledge, there are few investigations using high-resolution MRI technique to monitor in vivo morphological properties and contact areas of the cartilage during OA process in clinical practice.…”