T1rho, T2 and focal knee cartilage abnormalities in physically active and sedentary healthy subjects versus early OA patients—a 3.0-Tesla MRI study

Abstract

(1) To assess the degree of focal cartilage abnormalities in physically active and sedentary healthy subjects as well as in patients with early osteoarthritis (OA). (2) To determine the diagnostic value of T2 and T1rho measurements in identifying asymptomatic physically active subjects with focal cartilage lesions. Thirteen asymptomatic physically active subjects, 7 asymptomatic sedentary subjects, and 17 patients with mild OA underwent 3.0-T MRI of the knee joint. T1rho and T2 values, cartilage volume and thickness, as well as the WORMS scores were obtained. Nine out of 13 active healthy subjects had focal cartilage abnormalities. T1rho and T2 values in active subjects with and without focal cartilage abnormalities differed significantly (p < 0.05). T1rho and T2 values were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in early OA patients compared to healthy subjects. T1rho measurements were superior to T2 in differentiating OA patients from healthy subjects, yet T1rho was moderately age-dependent. (1) Active subjects showed a high prevalence of focal cartilage abnormalities and (2) active subjects with and without focal cartilage abnormalities had different T1rho and T2 composition of cartilage. Thus, T1rho and T2 could be a parameter suited to identify active healthy subjects at higher risk for developing cartilage pathology.

Probing articular cartilage damage and disease by quantitative magnetic resonance imaging

“…T 1r mapping has been shown to be comparable to arthroscopy in detecting preradiographic damage after trauma [112]. T 1r measures are also more sensitive and have a larger dynamic range than T 2 mapping [34,56,57]. Because of the improved sensitivity of T 1r values in distinguishing levels of cartilage damage [34,57], T 1r showed significant differences between healthy controls and OA patients with pre-radiographic and radiographic cartilage damage [53,54], with T 1r differences being more significant than differences in T 2 [53].…”

“…A significant thrust in much of the qMRI literature is towards the correlation of various qMRI values to biochemical content, typically determined in explants through histology [14,26 -30,41,42,50-52,107], and to pain score or OA grade [39,43,44,48,54,56,57,90,126]. A number of groups have applied qMRI techniques to evaluate the differences between cartilage in normal subjects and patients with higher OA risk [43 -45,87,101].…”

Management of Knee Articular Cartilage Injuries

“…Just as dGEMRIC may measure proteoglycan content, T1-rho values can also be used to assess extracellular matrix composition. The loss of articular cartilage early in osteoarthritis displays a higher T1-rho value than normal cartilage (Stahl, Luke et al 2009). T1-rho measures not only proteoglycan content, but also collagen and other non-collagen proteins within the matrix (Mlynarik, Trattnig et al 1999).…”

Restoration of limited defects of the cartilage with the use of cell-engineered constructs

“…В исследовании МРТ с применени-ем томографа 3.0 Тесла у 9 из 20 случайно выбран-ных испытуемых в возрасте 25-45 лет, не имеющих жалоб, выявлены повреждения суставного хряща коленного сустава [7]. При артроскопических опе-рациях, выполненных по различным показаниям, повреждения суставного хряща выявлены в 61-63% случаев [4,8].…”