3-T T2 mapping magnetic resonance imaging for biochemical assessment of normal and damaged glenoid cartilage: a prospective arthroscopy-controlled study

摘要

This study evaluated the ability of T2 mapping to assess the glenoid cartilage using arthroscopy as the gold standard. Eighteen consecutive patients (mean age: 52.4?±?14.72?years, including 12 men) with shoulder pain underwent T2 mapping at 3-T with subsequent shoulder arthroscopy. With correlation to cartilage-sensitive morphologic sequences regions-of-interest were placed in the corresponding T2 maps both in normal-appearing cartilage and focal cartilage lesions using a quadrant-wise approach. Inter-reader and intra-reader correlation coefficients (ICCs) between two independent radiologists as well as cut-off values with their sensitivities/specificities for the detection of cartilage damage were calculated. The mean T2 value for healthy cartilage was 23.0?±?3?ms with significantly higher values in the superior quadrants compared to the inferior quadrants (p??0.0001). In 5 patients with focal cartilage damage significantly higher T2 values of 44.7?±?3.7?ms (P??0.01) were observed. The maximum T2 value in normal cartilage (27.3?ms) was lower than the minimum value in damaged cartilage (40.8?ms) resulting in perfect sensitivities/specificities of 100% (95% confidence-interval 47.8–100.0) for all cut-off values between 27.3–40.8?ms. ICCs ranged between 0.63 and 0.99. In conclusion, T2 mapping can evaluate biochemical cartilage integrity and discriminates arthroscopy-proven healthy and damaged glenoid cartilage with high diagnostic performance.