Yukihisa Takayama1, Masamitsu Hatakenaka1,
Takashi Yoshiura1, Hidetoshi Tsushima2, Ken Okazaki2,
Kei Nishikawa3, Makoto Obara4, Yukihide Iwamoto2,
Hiroshi Honda1
1Department of Clinical
Radiology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka,
Japan; 2Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Graduate School of
Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan; 3Radiology
Center, Kyushu University Hospital, Fukuoka, Japan; 4Philips
Electronics Japan, Tokyo, Japan
We retrospectively compared T1 and T2 mapping with pathological results in osteoarthritis patients and analyzed their detectability of an early stage of denatured articular cartilage and correlations to the severity of denaturalization. Both mappings are useful to detect mild and moderate denaturalization prior to thinning of the articular cartilage and to assess the severity of denatured articular cartilage. In particular, T1 mapping is more sensitive than T2 mapping to detect early-stage denaturalization and to assess the severity of denaturalization.