Abstract #3314

Visualization of the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Using 3D Ultrashort Echo-Time MR Imaging at 3.0T

Noriyuki Tawara¹, Takahiro Ohnishi², Katsuya Maruyama², Mamoru Niitsu³, Hideyuki Takahashi⁴, Kohei Nakajima¹, Toru Okuwaki¹, Takashi Kawahara¹

¹Department of Sports Medicine, Japan Institute of Sports Scinences, Tokyo, Japan; ²Siemens Japan, Tokyo, Japan; ³Department of Radiology, Saitama Medcical University, Saitama, Japan; ⁴Department of Sports Science, Japan Institute of Sports Sciences, Tokyo, Japan

ACL injury is one of the most common, but serious injury among the sports injuries. In Japan more than 20,000 athletes are injured per year. MRI plays an important role in supporting the diagnosis of acute and chronic ligament injures. However there is no method to measure the maturation of the tendon and ligaments except UTE techniques. On the other hand, in knee MR imaging, the magic angle phenomenon affected largely to the depictability of the various ligaments. So, the aim of this work is to demonstrate the potential of 3D UTE imaging for kneefs ligament visualization, especially ACL.