Larry Hernandez1, Jessica L. Klaers1,
Walter F. Block1,2, Rick Kijowski3
1Medical Physics,
University of Wisconsin, School of Medicine & Public Health, Madison, WI,
United States; 2Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, WI, United States; 3Radiology, University of Wisconsin,
School of Medicine & Public Health, Madison, WI, United States
The study was performed to compare normalized SNR and CNR efficiency of VIPR-ATR and currently used MR sequences for evaluating the elbow joint. VIPR-ATR produces multi-planar images of the elbow joint with 0.4 mm isotropic resolution in 5 minutes. VIPR-ATR has significantly higher (p<0.05) cartilage and fluid normalized SNR efficiency and significantly higher (p<0.05) normalized CNR efficiency between fluid and adjacent joint structure when compared to PD-FSE, T2-FSE, SPGR, and FSE-Cube. VIPR-ATR can create reformat images in any plane following a single acquisition which is especially useful when evaluating the complex anatomic structures of the elbow joint.