Intra- and Inter-vendor Reproducibility of T1ρ Measurements in the Healthy Human Knee Joint

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a debilitating disease that results in cartilage loss and pain, but no drug is currently available for OA, largely due to the absence of a reliable index for measuring disease modifying effects of drug candidates in clinical trials. T1ρ MRI promises to be a reliable method because it provides a measure of cartilage degradation. However, it is critical to establish its reproducibility across MRI vendors before its universal use in clinical studies. Here we report the establishment of a clinically relevant reproducibility error in T1ρ in 25 healthy volunteer knees within and across 3T MRI scanners.