View Presentation Video

Sami Lehtovirta^1,2, Ahti Kemppainen^1,2, Marianne Haapea^2,3,4, Jaro Karppinen^1,5,6, Eveliina Lammentausta^2,3, Vesa Koivukangas⁷, Eero Kyllönen⁸, Mika Nevalainen^1,2,3, Petri Lehenkari^2,7,9, Victor Casula^1,2, and Miika T. Nieminen^1,2,3
1Research Unit of Health Science and Technology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, ²Medical Research Center, University of Oulu and Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland, ³Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland, ⁴Research Service Unit, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland, ⁵Center for Life Course Health Research, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, ⁶Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Oulu, Finland, ⁷Department of Surgery, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland, ⁸Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland, ⁹Research Unit of Translational Medicine, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

Keywords: Cartilage, Osteoarthritis

Obesity is a common risk factor for osteoarthritis (OA). We set out to study knee cartilage using T2 relaxation time, and knee OA symptoms with WOMAC OA index in obese individuals. Bariatric surgery patients were split into successful and unsuccessful weight loss groups, and compared with a control group of obese individuals over a 12-month follow-up. The lesser weight loss group displayed improvement of cartilage with lower T2 values in the lateral compartment of femoral cartilage, compared to the higher weight loss. We also observed improvement of knee symptoms in both successful and unsuccessful weight loss groups after 12 months. 

View Presentation Video

Keywords: Cartilage, Quantitative Imaging

Evaluation of unloaded-to-loaded changes within cartilage revealed that tibial cartilage thickness, T1ρ, and T2 metrics all decreased/shortened following application of 50% BW axial load. Shortening of loaded qMRI values is likely attributed to water loss from the cartilage matrix due to PG/matrix damage and attendant loss of cartilage FCD within this cadaveric model. As both the static and dynamic responses of cartilage to load are impacted by degeneration, quantification of unloaded-to-loaded T1ρ and T2 values may provide additional insight into cartilage health. Future work will evaluate unloaded-to-loaded cartilage T2* metrics to better elucidate movements of free and bound water pools.

View Presentation Video

Jiyo Srinivasan Athertya¹, James Lo^1,2, Alicia Ji¹, Charles Ding¹, Xiaojun Chen¹, Soo Hyun Shin¹, Bhavsimran Singh Malhi ¹, Saeed Jerban¹, Micael Carl³, Monica Guma^4,5, Eric Y Chang^1,5, Jiang Du^1,2,5, and Yajun Ma^1
1Radiology, UCSD, San Diego, CA, United States, ²Bioengineering, UCSD, San Diego, CA, United States, ³GE Healthcare, San Diego, CA, United States, ⁴Medicine, UCSD, San Diego, CA, United States, ⁵Radiology Service, VA, San Diego, CA, United States

Keywords: MSK, Contrast Mechanisms, Cartilaginous endplate, Spine

The cartilaginous endplate (CEP) plays a key role in maintaining the normal function of the intervertebral disc (IVD) by acting as a bridge for the transport of nutrients into the IVD cells. In this study, we developed a 3D dual inversion recovery prepared ultrashort echo time (DIR-UTE) sequence for high contrast CEP imaging and compared its performance with previously developed techniques on a clinical 3T scanner. We found that the proposed DIR-UTE sequence demonstrated the best image contrast for CEP imaging, which is highly promising for future clinical use.  

View Presentation Video

Shu-Fu Shih^1,2, Zhaohuan Zhang^1,2, Ashmita Deb^1,2, Xiaodong Zhong³, Timothy W. Ryan¹, and Holden H. Wu^1,2
1Radiological Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ²Bioengineering, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ³MR R&D Collaborations, Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, United States

Keywords: Cartilage, Cartilage

MRI T₂ mapping of cartilage has been shown to be useful in characterization and monitoring of osteoarthritis (OA). Compared to conventional spin echo-based sequences, the 3D dual-echo steady-state (DESS) sequence can provide faster T₂ mapping. Previous works proposed 3D DESS T₂ mapping in the knee using anisotropic resolution (e.g., in-plane resolution of 0.3x0.3mm² and slice thickness of 1.5-3mm), which limits the depiction of fine structures in 3D multiplanar reformatted images. This work investigated 3D DESS T₂ mapping in the knee with isotropic acquired resolution of 0.66x0.66x0.66 mm³ and used compressed sensing (CS) to accelerate the acquisition time to <5 minutes.

View Presentation Video

Thomas Lange¹, Philipp Rovedo¹, Patrick Hucker¹, Elham Taghizadeh^2,3, Kaywan Izadpanah⁴, Maxim Zaitsev¹, and Hans Meine^2,3
1Division of Medical Physics, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, ²Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Bremen, Germany, ³Medical Image Computing Group, Department of Informatics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, ⁴Department of Orthopedic and Trauma Surgery, Medical Center – University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Keywords: Cartilage, Motion Correction, dynamic MRI, loading, compression, recovery

The patellofemoral cartilage compression and recovery is measured with dynamic MRI in response to a bout of in situ loading in a cohort of ten healthy subjects. To mitigate motion artifacts arising from the loading paradigm, the experiments are performed with prospective motion correction based on optical tracking. The measured cartilage compression and recovery time course in response to loading and unloading is characterized by a larger fully elastic compression component adapting instantaneously to applied load changes, and a smaller compression component, which only gradually adapts to load changes and exhibits in particular a very protracted recovery after unloading.

View Presentation Video

Vladimir Juras¹, Stefan Toegel^2,3, Benedikt Hager^4,5,6, Markus Schreiner⁷, Veronika Janacova¹, Pavol Szomolanyi⁴, Didier Laurent⁸, Franziska Saxer⁹, Rahel Heule¹⁰, Oliver Bieri¹¹, Esther Raithel¹², Christoph Fuchssteiner¹³, Wolfgang Weninger¹³, Reinhard Windhager², and Siegfried Trattnig^4
1Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, ²Karl Chiari Lab for Orthopaedic Biology, Department of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, ³Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Arthritis and Rehabilitation, Vienna, Austria, ⁴High Field MR Centre, Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, ⁵Austrian Cluster for Tissue Regeneration, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology, Viennq, Austria, ⁶CD Laboratory for MR Imaging Biomarkers (BIOMAK), Vienna, Austria, ⁷Department of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, ⁸Department of Translational Medicine, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland, ⁹Department of translational Medicine, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland, ¹⁰Center for MR Research, University Children's Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland, ¹¹Division of Radiological Physics, Department of Radiology, University of Basel Hospital, Basel, Switzerland, ¹²Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany, ¹³Center for Anatomy and Cell Biology, Division of Anatomy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Keywords: Cartilage, Osteoarthritis, cartilage; texture analysis, histology

Texture features derived from quantitative MRI maps of cartilage have attracted increasing attention from the osteoarthritis (OA) community in recent years. In this work, texture analysis was used on T2 maps and validated using histological analysis. Some texture features (autocorrelation, contrast and entropy) correlated with the Mankin score; autocorrelation also correlated with collagen orientation calculated from PLM images. The correlation between image-derived features with histological quality scores can be a decisive step towards monitoring of cartilage regeneration in-vivo and help to identify therapies that restore articular cartilage quantity and quality.

View Presentation Video

Emily Sullivan^1,2, Andrew Yung³, Jessica Küpper^2,4, Kirsten Bale³, Piotr Kozlowski³, and David Wilson^2,4
1School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, ²Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, ³UBC MRI Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, ⁴Orthopaedics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Keywords: Cartilage, Osteoarthritis

The magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) was investigated as an alternative biomarker for cartilage strain compared to T2. Six ex vivo bovine knee specimens were compressed in a 9.4T scanner and scanned at several physiological step loads. Average strain, MTR, and T2 were calculated for each voxel column throughout the full depth of cartilage, and depth-dependent trends were identified. ΔMTR changed uniformly across the cartilage volume with strain, while ΔT2 showed a more localized yet inconsistent response. This suggests that MTR may be more sensitive in measuring cartilage strain in clinical applications where image resolution is lower.

View Presentation Video

Zhiyuan Zhang^1,2,3, Jeehun Kim^1,3,4, Richard Lartey^1,3, Carl Scherman Winalski^1,3,5, and Xiaojuan Li^1,3,5
1Program of Advanced Musculoskeletal Imaging (PAMI), Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States, ²Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States, ³Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States, ⁴Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States, ⁵Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Imaging Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States

Keywords: Cartilage, Quantitative Susceptibility mapping

Quantitative MR T1ρ and T2 imaging are promising methods to detect osteoarthritis at its early stage. Current T1ρ and T2 mapping in human subjects is limited to a relatively low resolution which has limited sensitivity to focal lesions due to partial-volume effects. One of the hurdles to achieving high resolution is the increase in fitting bias when using a conventional nonlinear least-squares fitting with low SNR images. In this study, we evaluated T1ρ quantification with in-vivo high-resolution imaging with different fitting methods. 

View Presentation Video

ALLEN A CHAMPAGNE¹, TAYLOR M ZULEGER^2,3,4,5, DANIEL R SMITH^2,4,5, ALEXIS B SLUTSKY-GANESH^2,4,5,6, SHAYLA M WARREN^2,4,5, LEXIE M SENGKHAMMEE^2,4,5, SAGAR MANDAVA⁷, HONGJIANG WEI⁸, DAVIDE D BARDANA⁹, GREG D MYER^2,4,5,10, and JED A DIEKFUSS^2,4,5
1School of Medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada, ²Emory Sports Performance And Research Center, Flowery Branch, GA, United States, ³Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ⁴Emory Sports Medicine Center, Atlanta, GA, United States, ⁵Department of Orthopaedics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States, ⁶Department of Kinesiology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, United States, ⁷GE Healthcare, Atlanta, GA, United States, ⁸School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, ⁹Department of Orthopaedics, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada, ¹⁰The Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention, Waltham, MA, United States

Keywords: Cartilage, Microstructure, Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping, T1rho, knee

The vertical microstructural organization of articular cartilage varies in its arrangement of collagen fibers, as well as the relative proteoglycan content. Knee osteoarthritis (OA) involves an inflammatory degenerative process that leads to depth-wise degeneration of the cartilaginous matrix. While quantitative MR protocols have emerged to evaluate proteoglycan content (T1ρ) and microstructural integrity (Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping; QSM), advances in layer-based analyses (e.g., superficial vs. deep) are warranted to identify the progression of diseased cartilage. We demonstrate the integrated utilization of QSM and T1ρ for characterizing depth-specific microstructural arrangement of articular cartilage, including differences in tissue organization and composition, respectively.

Huizheng Wang¹, Weiyin Vivian Liu², Wen Chen³, Jingyu Jiang⁴, Ling Sang³, Peng Zhang³, and Hu Chen^3
1Department of Radiology, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Hubei, China, ²GE Healthcare, Beijing, China, ³Shiyan Taihe Hospital, Hubei, China, ⁴Biomedical Engneering College, Hubei University of Medicine, Hubei, China

Keywords: Osteoarthritis, Cartilage

Knee meniscus tears cause fibrocartilage degeneration. Grade III meniscus is viewed as complete meniscus injury and should be further confirmed for the requirement of surgical intervention via arthroscopy. MAGiC provides quantitative relaxometry values. Our study showed that Grade III meniscus can be distinguished from Grade II ones using T1, T2 and PD. This finding suggested MAGiC can assist clinical follow-ups of knee meniscus and screen the indications for arthroscopic surgery.

Albert Jang^1,2, Zachary Stewart², Martin Torriani², Miho Tanaka³, and Fang Liu^1,2
1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States, ²Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ³Orthopedic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States

Keywords: Cartilage, Magnetization transfer

We propose to characterize cartilage extracellular matrix of the whole knee using a novel quantitative magnetization transfer (MT) imaging technique. This new technique achieves accurate T₁ and MT quantification by using a new sequence incorporating off-resonance RF pulses that create two simultaneous effects: 1) Bloch-Siegert phase shift to measure and correct for B₁⁺ inhomogeneity and 2) direct saturation of macromolecules to model MT. This new method, termed BTS (Bloch-Siegert and magnetization Transfer Simultaneously), is presented and validated in both phantom and in-vivo knee imaging experiments.

View Presentation Video

Diana Bencikova¹, Martin A. Cloos², Veronika Janacova¹, Siegfried Trattnig^1,3,4,5, and Vladimir Juras^1
1Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-Guided Therapy, Medical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria, ²University of Queensland, Queensland, Austria, ³CD Laboratory for MR Imaging Biomarkers (BIOMAK), Vienna, Austria, ⁴Austrian Cluster for Tissue Regeneration, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology, Vienna, Austria, ⁵Karl Landsteiner Society, Institute for Clinical Molecular MRI in the Musculoskeletal System, Vienna, Austria

Keywords: Cartilage, MR Fingerprinting, MSK, MR value, Osteoarthritis, Quantitative Imaging, Relaxometry

Quantitative MRI has been shown to be sensitive to early stages of cartilage degeneration in osteoarthritis, but conventional MRI techniques can measure only single parameter at a time. This poses time constraints and co-registration challenges. With MR Fingerprinting, multiple parameters can be assessed within single measurement. Here, we evaluated prototype MRF sequence in NIST phantom and healthy volunteers in combination with automatic cartilage segmentation procedure and compared to conventional techniques. We could show that the values provided by MRF sequence agreed with the values provided by conventional techniques. Therefore MRF is accurate and practical diagnosis tool for articular cartilage examination. 

View Presentation Video

Anoosha Pai S¹, Anthony A Gatti², Marianne S Black³, Arjun D Desai⁴, Jarrett Rosenberg², Katherine A Young², Jessica L Asay², Seth L Sherman⁵, Garry E Gold², Feliks Kogan², Brian Hargreaves², and Akshay S Chaudhari^6
1Bioengineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States, ²Radiology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States, ³Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, ⁴Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States, ⁵Orthopaedic Surgery, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States, ⁶Radiology/Integrative Biomedical Imaging Informatics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United States

Keywords: Cartilage, Osteoarthritis, ACL-injury, cartilage, knee

A 3D pipeline (longitudinal registration followed by cluster analysis) was developed to identify focal-lesions (clusters) of elevated T2 and T1ρ in femoral cartilage over 4-visits (3-weeks, 3, 9, and 18-months) post ACL-reconstruction surgery. Cluster Average (CA) and Cluster Percentage (CP) for T2 were significantly higher for ACL-inured when compared to ACL-contralateral and control-healthy knees. While the CP followed an increasing trend during subsequent visits, CA did not significantly vary across visits. Thus, our method could be effective for identifying and tracking quality (measured by CA) and quantity (measured by CP) of focal lesions in ACL-injured population.

View Presentation Video

Xiaoxia Zhang¹, Hector L. De Moura¹, Marcelo V. W. Zibetti¹, and Ravinder R. Regatte^1
1Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, United States

Keywords: Cartilage, Joints

In this study, we pre-trained a deep learning model for knee bone and cartilage segmentation with open dataset (MICCAI grand challenge "K2S 2022"), and then fine-tuned it with a small size of locally acquired data for customized task, in which we explored different contrasts as well. We can benefit from the large dataset size to increase the segmentation accuracy and generalization capabilities while reducing the labor and time of manual segmentation for training data. The preliminary results of a small dataset with 10 subjects using a simple 2D U-net are promising for single contrast and multi contrast images.

View Presentation Video

Abdul Wahed Kajabi^1,2, Stefan Zbyn^1,2,3, Jesse Smith^1,2, Morgan Homan⁴, Hasan Abbasguliyev⁵, Ariel N. Rodriguez⁴, Gregory J. Metzger¹, Robert F. LaPrade⁴, and Jutta M. Ellermann^1,2
1Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States, ²Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States, ³Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland, OH, United States, ⁴Twin Cities Orthopedics, Edina, MN, United States, ⁵Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Ataturk University Research Hospital, Erzurum, Turkey

Keywords: Cartilage, Quantitative Imaging

The aim of this study was to evaluate degenerative changes in articular cartilage of patients with posterior root tear of the medial meniscus. Multi-echo quantitative T2 mapping was acquired on a 7T clinical scanner. For reference, age- and gender-matched healthy controls were scanned using the same 7T protocol. Arthroscopic evaluation of articular cartilage and menisci was performed in patients during the repair of posterior medial root tears. Significantly higher T2 values were found in the lateral and medial femoral cartilage of the patients compared to healthy controls.