Yongxian Qian1, Ashley A. Williams2, Constance R. Chu2, Cynthia A. Britton1, Fernando E. Boada1, 3
1Radiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; 2Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; 3Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh
This work illustrates the potential of high resolution (0.14mm) ultrashort echo time (UTE) imaging for non-invasively visualizing micro cartilage defects and damages in human knee. Five patients with clinically-graded cartilage defects (arthroscopic grading) were scanned on a clinical MRI scanner at 3T, using a customer-developed fast 3D UTE pulse sequence, acquisition-weighted stack of spirals (AWSOS). The findings on HR-UTE images were verified by the clinical arthroscopic grading.