This study evaluates FRACTURE MRI's diagnostic performance for osteophytes and disc herniations in cervical radiculopathy, suggesting improved accuracy over conventional MRI.
Motivation: It is difficult to differentiate the cause of cervical radiculopathy, i.e. osteophytes and disc herniations, using conventional cervical spine MRI. Goal(s): To evaluate the diagnostic performance of fast field echo resembling a CT using restricted echo-spacing (FRACTURE) MRI sequence for the differentiation of osteophytes and disc herniations. Approach: The diagnostic performance of FRACTURE was evaluated using conventional cervical spine MRI combined with CT as a standard reference. Results: FRACTURE enables the reliable differentiation of osteophytes and disc herniations in patients with cervical radiculopathy with a higher sensitivity and specificity compared with conventional T1/T2 MR sequences. Impact: FRACTURE is a reliable technique for differentiating osteophytes and disc herniations. This could be relevant for younger patients in order to prevent unnecessary radiation exposure and may also facilitate a one-stop-shop approach and speed up diagnostic work-up.
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Jiang et al. (2025) studied this question.
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