Added value of MRI knee cartigram in assessment of anterior knee pain in comparison to conventional standard MRI

Abstract

From April 2020 to November 2020, this prospective Study was done to use T2 mapping to visualize the articular cartilage of the knee on 1.5 T MR Scanner using special software to evaluate the efficiency Of T2 mapping to detect cartilage lesions. The material of this study included 380 patients. The study includes all of them come complaining of knee pain and 2 of them had previous minor knee trauma, each patient had a single MRI exanimation including conventional MRI routine protocol and added a single complementary T2 mapping, Firstly, the standard imaging planes of the knee were evaluated with focusing on its articular cartilage at different imaging sequences, and then complementary T2 maps were generated using a special so ' software technique. Thereafter, these standard planes were evaluated together with the complementary T2 maps for the same regions, and articular cartilage was evaluated using a color scale. Intact articular cartilage was defined by the normal signal intensity in different pulse sequence with uniform thickness while in T2 maps normal knee articular cartilage at different sites generally below 40 milliseconds T2 mapping articular cartilage is feasible in the clinical setting and may reveal early cartilage lesions not visible with standard clinical MRI. Moreover, T2 mapping may be helpful in the determination of the actual lesion size and may be used as an additional tool when considering cartilage repair operations in traumatic cartilage lesions.