Abstract #3545

Rapid Isotropic Resolution Imaging of the Articular Cartilage of the Knee Joint at 3.0T Using VIPR-IDEAL

Larry Hernandez¹, Leah C. Henze Bancroft², Walter F. Block³,⁴, Richard Kijowski⁵

¹Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States; ²Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States; ³Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States; ⁴Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States; ⁵Radiology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States

VIPR-IDEAL can produce fat-suppressed, high isotropic resolution images of the knee joint in 5 minutes at 3.0T. VIPR-IDEAL, VIPR-ATR, FSE-Cube, IDEAL-GRASS, and IDEAL-SPGR sequences were performed on both knees of four volunteers and SNR/CNR was measured using a double acquisition addition/subtraction method. VIPR-IDEAL had similar cartilage and fluid SNR as VIPR-ATR and significantly higher (p<0.01) cartilage and fluid SNR than FSE-Cube, IDEAL-GRASS, and IDEAL-SPGR. VIPR-IDEAL had significantly greater (p<0.01) suppression of bone marrow fat signal than VIPR-ATR. Our study shows that VIPR-IDEAL has the same high SNR efficiency for evaluating articular cartilage as VIPR-ATR but provides superior fat suppression.