T1rho MR imaging for the evaluation of the denaturelizatoin of articular cartilage caused by osteoarthritis

T1rho作图是评估关节软骨的定量MR成像技术之一，因为它可以定量评估软骨中胶原蛋白和蛋白多糖（PG）等细胞外基质的含量。在骨关节炎（OA）的早期阶段，PG消耗发生在胶原蛋白减少之前。我们推测T1rho作图足够灵敏，可以在OA早期检测PG的缺失。因此，我们通过比较临床中广泛使用的T2测图，评估T1rho测图作为OA患者诊断工具的临床应用价值。我们比较了T1rho和T2映射通过放射学-组织学相关性区分正常和变性关节软骨的能力。我们得出结论，T1rho成像优于T2成像，用于评估膝关节骨性关节炎的变性关节软骨。

T1rho mapping is one of the quantitative MR imaging techniques for the assessment of articular cartilage, because it can quantitatively evaluate the contents of extracellular matrices, such as collagen and proteoglycan (PG), in the cartilage. At the early stage of osteoarthritis (OA), PG depletion occurs prior to the decrease in collagen. It is presumed that T1rho mapping is sensitive enough to detect PG depletion at the early stage of OA. Therefore, we evaluated the clinical utility of T1rho mapping as a diagnostic tool in patients with OA by comparing with T2 mapping which is widely used in clinical practice. We compared T1rho and T2 mappings for their ability to differentiate between normal and denatured articular cartilage by means of radiological-histological correlation. We concluded that T1rho mapping is superior to T2 mapping for the evaluation of denatured articular cartilage with osteoarthritis of the knee.