Evaluation of Slice Encoding for Metal Artifact Correction in Patients with Recalled Orthopedic Hip Implants

Conny Strm¹, Jrgen Strinnholm¹, Volker Otten², Jn Hauksson¹, Morten Bruvold³, Ulrike Blume³, Chiel den Harder³, Clemens Bos³

Wear and tear of orthopedic implants is seen in many patients approximately fifteen years after intervention. Clarification of the extent of resulting complications is crucial to evaluate to what extent implant replacement is necessary. CT provides information about bone density, bone dimensions and implant dimensions but not about tumor-like osteolytic tissue. MR covers soft tissue imaging but suffers from artifacts near metal. Recently, Slice-Encoding for Metal Artifact Correction (SEMAC) was introduced to counteract these artifacts. This work shows that, quite unlike conventional sequences, SEMAC can image osteolysis and enables tissue evaluation very close to metal implants, thus improving diagnosis quality.