Quantitative and Morphological Imaging of the Whole Knee
Top Row: The different contrasts that are provided by UTEDESS. The S+ echo has high signal from short-T2 tissues while the S- echo has a higher T2 weighting. A retrospective fat suppression can be formed via Dixon imaging to separate out the fat and water spectral content. Bottom Row: The high SNR acquisitions of UTEDESS allow for the measurements of T2 in arbitrary scan places in all soft tissues in the knee.
The ultrashort echo-time double-echo steady-state (UTEDESS) pulse sequence is a modification of the Cartesian DESS sequence, which replaces the 3D Cartesian readouts with 3D radial readouts. The radial readouts of the sequence offer echo-times as low as 50μs as well as very short TR’s, both of which contribute to an excellent SNR efficiency. A multi-echo variation of UTEDESS can be used to provide fat-water separated images. The fast acquisitions and the dual-echo nature of the sequence can be used to generate T2 relaxation time maps in short-T2 tissues such as the meniscus, tendons, and ligaments. The high isotropic resolutions and motion insensitivity afforded by radial sampling makes this sequence promising for routine clinical use.
The 3D radial sampling allows for high-isotropic resolution (0.5x0.5x0.5mm) imaging of the knee that is suitable for reformatting in arbitrary scan planes.
People
Akshey Chaudhari, Bragi Sveinsson, Catherine Moran, Marianne Black, Gaby Baylon, Feliks Kogan, Brian Hargreaves, Garry Gold, Marc Levenston
Publications
CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
Chaudhari AS, Sveinsson B, McWalter EJ, Gold GE, Hargreaves BA. T2 Relaxometry of Short T2 Tissues in the Knee with High SNR Efficiency. Submitted to the 9th International Workshop on Osteoarthritis Imaging (IWOAI), Oulu, Finland, 2016.
Chaudhari AS, Sveinsson B, Alley MT, McWalter EJ, Gold GE, Hargreaves BA. Rapid T2 Relaxometry of the Meniscus, Tendons, and Ligaments with an Ultrashort Echo-Time Double-Echo Steady State Sequence. In Proceedings of the 24th International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Annual Meeting, Singapore, Singapore, 2016.
Chaudhari AS, Moran CJ, McWalter EJ, Gold GE, Hargreaves BA. Imaging Knee Osteoarthritis with Multiple Contrasts using Ultrashort Echo-Time Double-Echo Steady-State MRI. In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Osteoarthritis Imaging (IWOAI), Pacific Grove, CA, 2015.
Chaudhari AS, Moran CJ, McWalter EJ, Gold GE, Hargreaves BA. Rapid, High-Resolution, and Multi-Contrast Knee MRI of Short T2 Tissues with Ultrashort TE Double-Echo Steady-State. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, 2015.
Awards
Merit Award for Highest Scoring Trainee Abstract – International Workshop on OA Imaging - Akshay Chaudhari (September 2015)
Acknowledgments
The study is funded by NIH R01-AR063643, NIH R01-EB002524, and NSF DGE-114747.
