Preliminary study on the assessment of early cartilage degeneration by quantitative ultrashort echo time magnetic resonance imaging in vivo

Abstract

Background: To investigate the feasibility of quantitative ultrashort echo time magnetic resonance imaging (UTE-MRI) techniques for assessing early cartilage degeneration in vivo.Methods: A total of 46 patients with knee pain due to osteoarthritis (OA) as the main complaint were recruited into the study. We performed MRI examinations with different quantitative UTE-MRI techniques, including UTE-based magnetization transfer (MT), UTE-adiabaticT1ρ, and UTE-T2* mapping on a 3.0T clinical magnetic resonance (MR) scanner (MR750; GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, WI, USA). Three regions of interest (ROIs) were manually drawn on the medial and lateral femoral condyles and the corresponding medial and lateral tibial plateaus, respectively. A total of 561 ROIs (12 ROIs for each knee) were finally included and divided into 3 groups according to the MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score (MOAKS): normal (MOAKS 0, n=175), mild degeneration (MOAKS 1, n=283), and moderate degeneration (MOAKS 2, n=103). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tamhane's T2 test were used to compare the differences of quantitative UTE-biomarkers among different groups. The analysis of Spearman's correlation was used to assess the correlation between the UTE-biomarkers and MOAKS grading. The diagnostic efficacy of different quantitative UTE-MRI techniques for detecting mild cartilage degeneration was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Results:The UTE-MT ratio (UTE-MTR) and the UTE-adiabatic T1ρ values had a moderate correlation with the MOAKS grading (r=−0.523, P<0.001; r=0.531, P<0.001, respectively), while the UTE-T2* was weakly correlated with the MOAKS grading (r=−0.396, P<0.001). For the normal group (MOAKS 0) and the mild group (MOAKS 1), the UTE-MTR values were 21.09%±3.03% and 17.30%±3.22%, respectively. The UTE-adiabatic T1ρ values were 30.43±6.26 ms and 35.05±8.78 ms for the normal group (MOAKS 0) and the mild group (MOAKS 1), respectively. With respect to the UTE-T2* values, the normal group (MOAKS 0) values were 21.49±3.96 ms and the mild group (MOAKS 1) values were 19.86±3.08 ms. All the differences between the 2 groups of the 3 UTE-MRI values were significant. The AUCs of the UTE-MTR, UTEadiabatic T1ρ, and UTE-T2* mapping were 0.794, 0.732, and 0.651, respectively. Conclusions:The quantitative UTE-MRI techniques (UTE-MT, UTE-adiabatic T1ρ, and UTE-T2* mapping) show great promise for assessing the early degeneration of articular cartilage in vivo, and the UTE-We present the following article in accordance with the STARD reporting checklist (available at https://qims. amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/qims-21-1181/rc). Methods ParticipantsA total of 46 OA patients, including 26 males (age range: 30 to 71 years; 48.3±11.1 years) and 20 females (age range: 37 to 72 years; 51.0±7.9 years) with complaints of knee joint discomfort and no contraindication to MRI examination were recruited within a year. Among them, 5 patients were scanned bilaterally. The exclusion criteria included previous knee surgery or traumatic knee i...

The effect of cartilage dehydration and rehydration on quantitative ultrashort echo time biomarkers

“…In recent years, a range of quantitative ultrashort echo time (UTE) MRI techniques have been used to assess cartilage properties ( 6 , 7 ), including T 1 ( 8 ), adiabatic T 1ρ (AdiabT 1ρ ) ( 9 - 11 ), macromolecular fraction (MMF) ( 12 ), magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) ( 13 ), and T 2 * ( 14 ). The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of cartilage dehydration and rehydration on these quantitative UTE biomarkers and to investigate what type of solution is able to adequately rehydrate the cartilage without significantly confounding biomarker measurements, using results from fresh cartilage samples as the reference standard.…”