Goetz Hannes Welsch1,2, Tallal Charles
Mamisch3, Lukas Zak4, Matthias Blanke2,
Alexander Olk2, Stefan Marlovits4, Siegfried Trattnig1
1MR Center, Department of Radiology,
Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; 2Department of
Trauma and Orthpaedic Surgery, University Hospital of Erlangen, Erlangen,
Germany; 3Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Basel,
Basel, Switzerland; 4Center for Joints and Cartilage, Department
of Trauma Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Aim
of the study was to compare cartilage repair tissue at the femoral condyle
noninvasively after matrix-associated autologous chondrocyte transplantation
(MACT) using Hyalograft C (HC), a hyaloronic acid-based scaffold, to cartilage
repair tissue after MACT using CaReS, a collagen-based scaffold, with
morphological and biochemical MRI. Differences in the surface of the repair
tissue using morphological MRI and higher T2 values for the cartilage repair
tissue depicted by biochemical T2 maps indicate differences in the
composition of the repair tissue that was based on a collagen scaffold
(CaReS), compared to the hyaloronic acid-based scaffold (HC), even two years
post-implantation.