Authors: Milena L Pachowsky Siegfried Trattnig Sebastian Apprich Andreas Mauerer Stephan Zbyn Goetz H Welsch
Publish Date: 2013/08/23
Volume: 42, Issue: 11, Pages: 1565-1572
Abstract
Fifteen volunteers were examined on the same 3Tesla MR unit using three different coils i a dedicated eightchannel knee phasedarray coil ii an eightchannel multipurpose coil and iii a onechannel 1H surface coil T2 and T2 relaxation time measurements were prepared by a multiecho spinecho respectively a gradientecho sequence A semiautomatic regionofinterest analysis was performed for patella cartilage To allow stratification a subregional analysis was carried out deepsuperficial cartilage layer Statistical analysisofvariance was performedThe mean quantitative T2 values showed statistically significant differences in all comparison combinations The differences between the mean quantitative T2 values were slightly less pronounced than the T2 evaluation and only the comparison between i and ii showed a significant difference The results of T2 and T2 values showed independent of the used coil higher values in the superficial zone compared to the deep zone p 005 Looking at the signal alterations all coils showed clearly higher values and thus more signal alterations as a sign of noise in the deep layer The validation of the reliability showed a high intraclass correlation coefficient and hence a very high plausibility ICC was between 0870 and 0905 for T2 mapping and between 0879 and 0888 for T2 mapping
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