Abstract #0055

Jurvelin J, Nieminen M, Kiviranta I, Tyrs J, Kiviranta P, Lammentausta E

Samples from human cadaveric patellar cartilage were divided into three groups (Healthy, Early degeneration and Advanced degeneration) based on their Mankin score. Based on the present results, significant, degeneration dependent variation existed in superficial and bulk T2 values as well as in mechanical and compositional parameters of human patellar cartilage. These results indicate that elevated T2 relaxation time values effectively identify advanced degeneration of articular cartilage while dGEMRIC correlates relatively poorly with mechanical or compositional parameters in this setting.