In Vivo DTI of Articular Cartilage: A New Set of Biomarkers For the Early Diagnosis of Osteoarthritis

Jose G. Raya¹, Annie Horng², Olaf Dietrich², Svetlana Krasnokutsky, Luis S. Beltran, Maximilian F. Reiser², Michael Recht, Michael Recht, Christian Glaser

In this work we assess the value of in vivo DTI of the articular cartilage for the early diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA) at 7T using a 28Ch knee coil and a line scan diffusion sequence. DTI and T2 maps were obtained from 16 volunteers and 8 OA patients with early morphologic cartilage degeneration. Discrimination of the volunteer and patient were possible with mean ADC and FA (P<0.005) but not with T2. A cutoff of 1.210-3mm2 in average ADC and 0.4 in average FA resulted in a specificity of 100% and a sensitivity of 87.5% (positive predictive value=100%, negative predictive value=94.1%).