Compositional MRI techniques have gained increasing attention in Osteoarthritis (OA) research over the recent years, as they allow detection of early biochemical alteration in musculoskeletal tissues prior to appearance of the morphological changes. This presentation will provide an overview of basic technical principles, biochemical correlates, recent technical developments and in vivo applications of compositional MRI techniques for early detection, monitoring and prediction of OA progression in the knee joint.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a complex disease process with multiple phenotypes affecting several different joint tissues. MRI can assess OA-related changes in soft and osseous tissues and therefore plays an important role in our understanding of OA pathogenesis, determining predisposing factors, and following its clinical progression. Among MR-based metrics, compositional MRI techniques have gained increasing attention over the recent years, as they allow evaluation of early biochemical changes in musculoskeletal tissues prior to detectable morphological changes using conventional clinical MRI sequences.
This presentation will focus on compositional MRI techniques, used to evaluate degenerative changes in cartilage and menisci [1], such as T2 and T1ρ relaxation time mapping [2-5], delayed gadolinium-enhanced MRI of cartilage (dGEMRIC) [6, 7], glycosaminoglycan (GAG) specific chemical exchange saturation transfer (gagCEST) [8], diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) [9], and sodium imaging [10]. The review of basic technical principles, biochemical correlates, recent technical developments, advantages and challenges of compositional techniques will be followed by the findings from recent cross-sectional and longitudinal in vivo studies employing compositional MRI for the evaluation of OA patients.
Compositional MRI techniques play an increasingly important role in OA research, demonstrating their potential to complement morphological MRI and thus improve early detection, monitoring and prediction of disease progression. Further studies are needed to standardize data acquisition and postprocessing, and to evaluate the applicability and responsiveness of these techniques in large-scale studies before establishing the compositional MRI biomarkers as endpoints in OA clinical trials.
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