Purpose To determine the intermodality agreement of morphologic grading and clinically relevant quantitative measurements between computed tomography (CT) and zero echo time (ZTE) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the shoulder. The primary objective was to demonstrate the clinical applicability of ZTE in osseous shoulder imaging. Materials and Methods Thirty-four patients undergoing standard-of-care (SOC) MR imaging with concomitant CT were enrolled in this institutional review board-approved study. ZTE images were acquired after SOC MR imaging. Glenoid morphology (version, vault depth, erosion), injury or disease (osteoarthritis, Bankart and Hill-Sachs lesions, subchondral cysts), and evidence of prior surgery were graded or measured. κ Values, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), and Bland-Altman limits of agreement were used to establish agreement. Qualitative comparison of osseous findings was performed between ZTE and SOC MR imaging. Results Binary classification and nominal/ordinal grades showed substantial or better agreement between raters and modalities (κ or ICC > 0.6). Continuous measurements exhibited strong correlation between raters and modalities, although not universally. Bankart ICCs were not significant, owing to low prevalence. ZTE exhibited greater conspicuity of enthesopathic cysts and marrow edema. In 21 of 34 cases, ZTE imaging of osseous features exceeded SOC MR imaging. Conclusion ZTE MR imaging provides "CT-like" contrast for bone. The results of this study demonstrate strong intermodality agreement between measurements and grades from CT and ZTE images in a cohort of patients undergoing imaging with both modalities. A majority of ZTE image sets provided superior visualization of osseous features when compared with SOC MR image sets. This superiority coupled with strong quantitative agreement with CT suggests that ZTE may be used clinically in lieu of CT in some cases. RSNA, 2017 Online supplemental material is available for this article.
Roughly one quarter of active upper limb prosthetic technology is rejected by the user, and user surveys have identified key areas requiring improvement: function, comfort, cost, durability, and appearance. Here we present the first systematic, clinical assessment of a novel prosthetic hand, the SoftHand Pro (SHP), in participants with transradial amputation and age-matched, limb-intact participants. The SHP is a robust and functional prosthetic hand that minimizes cost and weight using an underactuated design with a single motor. Participants with limb loss were evaluated on functional clinical measures before and after a 6–8 hour training period with the SHP as well as with their own prosthesis; limb-intact participants were tested only before and after SHP training. Participants with limb loss also evaluated their own prosthesis and the SHP (following training) using subjective questionnaires. Both objective and subjective results were positive and illuminated the strengths and weaknesses of the SHP. In particular, results pre-training show the SHP is easy to use, and significant improvement in the Activities Measure for Upper Limb Amputees in both groups following a 6–8 hour training highlights the ease of learning the unique features of the SHP (median improvement: 4.71 and 3.26 and p = 0.009 and 0.036 for limb loss and limb-intact groups, respectively). Further, we found no difference in performance compared to participant’s own commercial devices in several clinical measures and found performance surpassing these devices on two functional tasks, buttoning a shirt and using a cell phone, suggesting a functional prosthetic design. Finally, improvements are needed in the SHP design and/or training in light of poor results in small object manipulation. Taken together, these results show the promise of the SHP, a flexible and adaptive prosthetic hand, and pave a path forward to ensuring higher functionality in future.
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