Use of Ultrasonography Versus Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Tendon Abnormalities Around the Ankle

Abstract

A prospective study was performed on 28 patients who underwent surgery for tendon disorders around the ankle. Preoperatively, all patients had real-time, high resolution ultrasonography performed with a 7.5 or 10 mHz transducer. Twenty of these patients also had a preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination of the ankle. A total of 54 tendons were inspected intraoperatively, revealing a total of 24 intrasubstance or complete tendon tears. These surgical findings were compared with the ultrasound and MRI findings, from which the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were calculated for both modalities. Ultrasound produced results with a sensitivity measurement of 100%, specificity of 89.9%, and accuracy of 94.4%. MRI produced results with a sensitivity measurement of 23.4%, specificity of 100%, and accuracy of 65.75%. Ultrasound results were more sensitive and accurate than MRI in the detection of ankle tendon tears in our study.

Ultrasound assessment of tendons in asymptomatic volunteers: a study of reproducibility

“…There is limited data available in the literature regarding the effects of these factors leading to the justifiable criticism of unproven inter-and intra-observer reproducibility. The diagnostic performance of tendon ultrasound has been assessed with surgical correlation, though little reproducibility data is available [15][16][17][18]. The normal size variation of tendons has also been reported with both ultrasound and magnetic resonance without detailing observer variability in obtaining these measures [19][20][21][22][23].…”

How does a cadaver model work for testing ultrasound diagnostic capability for rheumatic-like tendon damage?

“…The group has worked on validation of US-detected and graded tendon damage in RA [19,20], which is an essential component of the structural damage in this disease [19,20]. This comes in the wake of proven US capability in the diagnosis of superficial tendon lesions, as shown in a number of studies [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], most using surgical findings [6][7][8] or cadaver models [9,11,12] as criterion standard. In particular, concurrent validity of US in detecting hand tendon tears in RA was shown using surgical findings as criterion standard [8].…”

“…Over the last decades, musculoskeletal (MS) ultrasound (US) has been successfully validated for the diagnosis of tendon injuries at the wrist/hand and ankle/foot [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], with an accuracy comparable to that of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [6,8,10,11]. Both imaging techniques are especially useful in the detection of partial tendon tears, which are much more challenging to diagnose by clinical assessment than complete tears [8].…”

Standardisierter Einsatz bildgebender Verfahren (Sonographie/MRT) zur Darstellung der Sehne des M. tibialis posterior bei Tibialis-posterior-Dysfunktion

“…Erst in den letzten Jahren konnte sich die "Small-parts-Sonographie" unter Verwendung hochfrequenter Sonden hinsichtlich der Kriterien Sensitivität, Spezifität und Genauigkeit bei der Darstellung von Sehnenläsionen im Rückfußbereich dem Standard des MRTs angleichen bzw. diesen sogar übertreffen [7,11,26,36]. Ein systematisches Vorgehen in der bildgebenden Diagnostik der TPD könnte ein frühes, stadiengerechtes therapeutisches Eingreifen ermöglichen mit dem Ziel, den schnellen, progredienten Verlauf der Fußdeformität zu verhindern.…”

“…Degenerative Sehnenverän-derungen gehen in aller Regel in den Anfangsstadien mit einer deutlichen Querschnittszunahme einher [1,3,8,13,16,22,26,30]. Bei Partialrupturen finden sich zusätzlich longitudinale Längsaufspleißungen.…”