Riti Gupta1, Daniel Kuo2,
Warapat Virayavanich2, Benjamin Ma3, Xiaojuan Li2
1University of California,
Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States; 2Radiology & Biomedical
Imaging, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, United States; 3Orthopedic
Surgery, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, United States
Knees with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears have a high risk of developing post-traumatic OA. Quantitative MRI T1ρ mapping has been suggested as a promising tool to detect early biochemical changes in cartilage matrix during degeneration. Although many studies in literature show that T1ρ could potentially detect cartilage degeneration non-invasively, few studies have correlated quantitative MRI measures with clinical evaluation of cartilage degeneration using arthroscopy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the capability of MR T1ρ to detect cartilage lesions as evaluated by arthroscopy in acutely ACL-injured knees, and to compare with WORMS scoring using clinical standard MRI.