MRI Semi-Quantitative Evaluation of Clinical Features of Cartilage Injury in Patients with Osteoarthritis

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the correlation between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of articular cartilage and clinical symptoms in patients with osteoarthritis (OA). Eighty patients with OA were selected as the study subjects (OA group) and 80 healthy subjects during the same period were also selected as the control group. All subjects underwent knee sagittal PDW-SPAIR, sagittal T1WI-aTSE, sagittal T2WI-TSE, coronal PDW-SPAIR, sagittal 3D-WATSc, and sagittal T2 mapping scans. Thereafter, all subjects underwent clinical assessment. The whole-organ MRI score (WORMS) was adopted for MRI examination and semiquantitative analysis, and the T2 value was calculated. The correlation among T2 value, WORMS, and Western Ontario and Mc Master University OA Index (WOMAC) was then compared and analyzed. The correlation coefficients between T2 values and WORMS in each sub-region of patients with OA were 0.8, 0.55, −0.038, 0.811, and 0.743; the correlation coefficients between WORMS and WOAMC were 0.66, 0.71, 0.46, and 0.88; and the correlation coefficients between T2 values and WOAMC were 0.483, 0.33, 0.282, and 0.636, respectively. There was a significant positive correlation between the results of MRI semiquantitative analysis and clinical symptoms as well as disease severity in patients with OA.