Akshay Chaudhari Receives Abstract Awards at ISMRM-RSNA Workshop on High-Value MRI

For examining typical knee injuries, such as ACL tears (top) or meniscal tears (bottom), DESS images from Akshay’s rapid quantitative protocols (left) have similar diagnostic value as conventional knee MR images (middle). The rapid protocols can also provide quantitative information such as T2 relaxation time measurements (right), which may provide additional diagnostic information relating to the tissue biochemistry.

February 2018.

Postdoc Akshay Chaudhari was awarded 2nd place in both the Best Scientific and Best Value categories for his abstract, "Diagnostic Comparison of Two High-Value Diagnostic & Quantitative Rapid-Knee MRI Protocols" at the ISMRM-RSNA Co-Provided Workshop on High-Value MRI.  Congratulations, Akshay!

There are approximately 1.25 million clinical knee MRI scans performed in the US annually, requiring approximately 30 minutes of scan time. This exploratory study evaluated the diagnostic performance of two abbreviated knee protocols.   (1) A single 5-minute quantitative 3D double-echo in steady-state (DESS) sequence showed 99% sensitivity and 90% specificity compared to the conventional 30-min protocol in 35 subjects.   (2) A 5-minute DESS sequence paired with a 2-minute coronal proton-density fat-saturated (PDFS) sequence showed 99% sensitivity and 100% specificity compared to the conventional protocol in 20 subjects.

This shows extremely promising potential for DESS as a single or abbreviated knee MRI scan, which could lower cost and increase access to MRI.  Furthermore the DESS scan offers quantitative evaluation for research studies.