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BackgroundMajority of musculoskeletal cross-sectional imaging requests have a non-revealing and non-specific clinical history of pain. However, the location of pain is very relevant towards arriving at a specific orthopedic diagnosis. The purpose of this research was to study the impact of skin marker placement and training of technologists prior to knee MRI in detection of clinically important findings.MethodsTotal 200 consecutive left knee MRIs were evaluated before and after technologist training with regards to marker placement at the site of clinical symptoms or palpable finding. Marker location in relation to the knee was recorded and important findings were classified as correlated important finding, non-correlated important finding, other compartment important finding in non-correlated cases, and diffuse abnormality, i.e. tri-compartmental cartilage defects in both correlated and non-correlated cases. Differences among scans before and after technologist training were analyzed.ResultsThe marker placement was observed in higher proportion of patients in post-training scans (78% vs 60%, p = 0.00). The most common location of the marker was in anterior or anterolateral knee (32% and 34% cases, respectively). The marker-important finding correlation was also higher post training, but not statistically significant (53% versus 38%, p = 0.57). Important findings correlated with the marker in more than 50% of the scans in the post-training set.ConclusionMarker placement can aid in detection of clinically important imaging finding and technologist training aids in increased rates of marker placement and improved correlation.

Endovascular stents that are implanted in an artery are often used in the interventional treatment of coronary artery disease. Its widespread applications are, however, limited by the development of subacute thrombosis (clot forming inside of the stent). Ex vivo experiments with pigs have shown that the broadband A-mode ultrasound is quite effective in detection thrombosis and restenosis in an endovascular stent. [Work supported by BFGoodrich and Noveon, Inc.]