The Clinical Application Study Of Delayed Gadolinium-enhanced MR Imaging Of Cartilage (dGEMRIC) On Knee Ariticular Cartilage Degeneration

Objective:To evaluate the clinical application of delayed Gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging of cartilage in knee osteoarthritis(OA), the T1map technique in knee joint at MR imaging was applied to patients with varying degrees of osteoarthritis (OA) compared with healthy subjects.Methods:Knees of 30 patients been clinically diagnosed as OA in our hospital were divided into the mild OA group and the severe OA group according to the Kellgren-Lawrence grades in X-ray imaging.Knees of 11 healthy adults were recruited as the normal group.So a total of 41 cases were then divided into 3 groups,and were all underwent 3.0T MRI with two flip angles T1 map images of 90-120mins following intravenous injections of Gd-DTPA2- and knee activities lasts for 10mins immediately after injections. The T1 values of cartilage were measured in medial femur,lateral femur,medial tibia and lateral tibia cartilage. Analysis of variance and a t-test were used for the statistical analyses.Results:The average T1 values of normal group, mild OA and severity OA group were 518.9-540.2ms,465.0-482.7ms,365.9-370.2ms,respectively.There were significant differences among the three groups(P<0.05).Conclusion:The delayed Gadolinium-enhanced MRI of cartilage can observe the GAG content in articular cartilage quantitatively, so as to evaluate the cartilage composition of biological organization and play an important role in the diagnosis of early cartilage degeneration.