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BACKGROUND: Biomarkers for assessing osteoarthritis activity necessitate multiple MRI sequences with long acquisition times. PURPOSE: relaxometry of both cartilage and meniscus, and semiquantitative MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Scoring (MOAKS). STUDY TYPE: Prospective. SUBJECTS: measurements, and 15 patients (five each Kellgren-Lawrence grades 0/2/3) for MOAKS assessment. FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: A 5-minute double-echo steady-state (DESS) sequence was evaluated for generating quantitative and semiquantitative osteoarthritis biomarkers at 3T. ASSESSMENT: reproducibility was compared against morphometry-optimized and relaxometry-optimized sequences. Repeatability was assessed by scanning five volunteers twice. MOAKS reproducibility was compared to MOAKS derived from a clinical knee MRI protocol by two readers. STATISTICAL TESTS: Coefficients of variation (CVs), concordance confidence intervals (CCI), and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests compared morphometry and relaxometry measurements with their reference standards. DESS MOAKS positive percent agreement (PPA), negative percentage agreement (NPA), and interreader agreement was calculated using the clinical protocol as a reference. Biomarker variations between Kellgren-Lawrence groups were evaluated using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. RESULTS: , and MOAKS (cartilage surface area, osteophytes, cysts, and total score) was higher in Kellgren-Lawrence groups 2 and 3 than group 0 (P < 0.05). DATA CONCLUSION: relaxometry and morphometry measurements. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 2 Technical Efficacy: Stage 1 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2018;47:1328-1341.
Chaudhari et al. (Wed,) studied this question.