Cartilage Repair Surgery: Outcome Evaluation by Using Noninvasive Cartilage Biomarkers Based on Quantitative MRI Techniques?
Figure 5
Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) of a 42-year-old male patient 24 months after microfracture therapy of the patella cartilage (marked by arrows). Images (a) and (b) represent the raw images of two different diffusion directions, whereas image (c) is the reversed FISP sequence without any diffusion quotient. As visualized in the diffusion map (d), the diffusivity was clearly increased in the cartilage repair tissue compared to the surrounding cartilage. DWI maps were reconstructed using a three-dimensional, balanced, steady-state gradient echo pulse sequence with diffusion weighting (3D DWPSIF) (reversed FISP = fast imaging with steady-state precession), with a TR of 16.3 ms and TEs of 6.1 ms. The field of view was 160 × 160 mm, the pixel matrix was 384 × 384, and the voxel size was 0.4 × 0.4 × 3.0 mm, with 3 slices (through the area of cartilage repair); total acquisition time was 6:48 minutes.
