Repeatability of T1-Quantification in DGEMRIC for Three Different Acquisition Techniques: 2D-Inversion Recovery, 3D-Look-Locker and 3D-Variable Flip Angle

Carl Siversson¹, Carl-Johan Tiderius², Paul Neuman², Leif Dahlberg², Jonas Svensson¹

Delayed Gadolinium enhanced MRI of cartilage (dGEMRIC) is a technique for molecular imaging of the proteoglycan level in cartilage using T1 quantifications. Until now there have been no studies of the repeatability of such T1 quantifications in 3D. Measurements were performed twice on the same knee, with two weeks separation, on 9 subjects using 2D-Inversion Recovery (2D-IR), 3D-Look Locker (3D-LL) and 3D-Variable Flip Angle (3D-VFA) methods. The 2D-IR and 3D-LL sequences perform roughly equally well, thus verifying the stability of the 3D-LL sequence. With 3D-VFA there is a considerably larger deviation than with the other sequences.