T2* Relaxation Time of Acetabular and Femoral Cartilage With and Without Intraarticular Gadopentetate Dimeglumine in Patients With Femoroacetabular Impingement

Abstract

Objective To assess if the presence of intra-articular Gd-DTPA2- during clinical MR arthrography significantly alters the T2* relaxation times of hip articular cartilage in patients with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). Materials and Methods The institutional review board (IRB) approved this study, and informed consents were obtained in this HIPAA compliant study. T2* mapping of ten patient volunteers (F/M: 7/3, age range 14-49, mean±SD = 33.0 ± 12.2 years) with symptomatic FAI was performed before and after intra-articular Gd-DTPA2- administration. Overall 323 regions of interest (ROIs) were defined in acetabular and femoral cartilage each, pre- and post-Gd injection. Agreement of the relaxation times between pre- and post-Gd was assessed using Krippendorff's alpha coefficient and linear regression through the origin. Results Pre-Gd and post-Gd T2* relaxation times in both acetabular and femoral cartilage were found to agree strongly. Specifically, estimated Krippendorff's alphas were greater than 0.8 for both acetabular and femoral cartilage, and linear regressions through the origin yielded estimated slopes very close to 1 and R2 values greater than 0.98. Conclusions These results indicate that intra-articular injection of Gd-DTPA2-, along the protocol described in this study, has little effect on T2* values of femoral and acetabular cartilage. The results suggest that T2* mapping can be safely performed as an addition to standard clinical hip imaging protocol utilizing Gd-DTPA2-.

Both 3-T dGEMRIC and Acetabular-Femoral T2 Difference May Detect Cartilage Damage at the Chondrolabral Junction

“…Additionally, a possible influence of gadolinium administration on T2 relaxation (FAI cohort) might have biased our results. However, in analyzing the effect of intraarticular gadolinium administration on T2 * relaxation, a previously published study has not detected such an influence [23]. The fact that we did not observe a significant difference when comparing T2 values across healthy and unhealthy hips highlights the complexity of interpreting this methodology.…”

MRI evaluation of articular cartilage in patients with juvenile osteochondritis dissecans (JOCD) using T2∗ mapping at 3T

“…Quantitative MRI with T2* parametric mapping is a noninvasive imaging technique used to measure cartilage integrity in the knee joint 27 , hip 28,29 , wrist 30 , ankle 31 , and intervertebral disc 32 . T2* mapping offers several advantages to the more commonlyused clinical sequence, including short echo times (TE) to visualize the bone structure, high signal-to-noise ratio, and short acquisition times 2 .…”

Do dGEMRIC and T2 Imaging Correlate With Histologic Cartilage Degeneration in an Experimental Ovine FAI Model?

“…Additionally, the injection of gadolinium could have biased our resultant T2 values of hip cartilage. However, no relevant changes in T2 [32] and T2* [28] values of hip cartilage were observed in studies investigating the effect of intraarticular gadolinium on T2 and T2 relaxation. Second, at the time of the assigned euthanasia, no negatively charged gadolinium-based contrast agent was available for animal use; we had to use a nonionic MR contrast agent.…”