T1ρ MRI Quantification of Arthroscopically Confirmed Cartilage Focal Lesions in Knees with Acute ACL Injuries

Riti Gupta¹, Daniel Kuo², Warapat Virayavanich², Benjamin Ma³, Xiaojuan Li²

Knees with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears have a high risk of developing post-traumatic OA. Quantitative MRI T1ρ mapping has been suggested as a promising tool to detect early biochemical changes in cartilage matrix during degeneration. Although many studies in literature show that T1ρ could potentially detect cartilage degeneration non-invasively, few studies have correlated quantitative MRI measures with clinical evaluation of cartilage degeneration using arthroscopy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the capability of MR T1ρ to detect cartilage lesions as evaluated by arthroscopy in acutely ACL-injured knees, and to compare with WORMS scoring using clinical standard MRI.