Affiliations: UMR 7561 CNRS – Nancy Université, Vandoeuvre lès Nancy, France | Creatis-LRMN, CNRS UMR 5220, Inserm U630, INSA-Lyon, Université de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Pierre Gillet, UMR 7561 CNRS – Nancy Université, Vandoeuvre lès Nancy, France. E-mail: pierre.gillet@medecine.uhp-nancy.fr.
Abstract: Objectives: to assess reliability and reproducibility of quantitative MRI (7 T) in assessing rat femoro-tibial cartilage volume. Methods: 5 healthy rat knees were scanned in vivo using a 7 T experimental imager. Sagittal high resolution 3D Gradient Echo with fat suppression sequences were performed with a dedicated home-made 2-elements array coil. 3D MRI sets were used to perform manual segmentation of the 3 cartilage compartments (femoral groove, medial and lateral tibial plateaus) by using a tactile screen. To evaluate inter- and intra-observer reproducibilities, the segmentation procedure was done blindly by two trained observers. One observer repeated the operation twice, with a period of 10 months between both readings. Results: the mean duration to manually segment all the slices covering the cartilaginous joint was 4 hours. On the one hand, the inter-observer root mean square of coefficients of variation was 9.1%, 6.2%, 9.6% for the femoral, medial and lateral tibial compartments respectively. On the other hand, the intra-observer reproducibility was 2.1%, 3.2%, 2.5% for these cartilage compartments cited above. Conclusion: the image quality obtained at 7 Teslas with our dedicated coil allowed segmentation of the cartilage compartments with good reproducibility. This study demonstrated that MRI is a useful technology to provide a non-invasive and reliable assessment of rat knee cartilage volume.
Keywords: Cartilage, quantitative MRI, in vivo, reproducibility, volume, rat
