الفهرس 
Antomy of articular cartilageOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
MRI T2 mapping of the cartilage is a non-invasive functional imaging technique delivering cartography of the T2 relaxation time of the cartilage without any contrast injection. It is sensitive to tissue anisotropy, and provides compositional information on the cartilage collagen network,water content and proteoglycans concentration.This prospective study was done to use sagittal T2 mapping sequence to evaluate of knee joint articular cartilage on 1.5 T MR Scanner using special software.The material of this study included thirty (30) patients. The study included 24/30 cases presented by knee pain, 6/30 cases presented by knee pain following trauma , 10/30 cases presented by limitation of movement and 7/30 cases presented by knee swelling. As each patient had a single conventional MRI examination of the knee followed by a single sagittal T2 maps, 30 MRI examinations and 30 corresponding T2 maps were analyzed.Firstly, the standard imaging planes of the knee were evaluated with focusing on its articular cartilage at different imaging sequences, and then sagittal T2 maps were generated using a special software technique. Thereafter, these standard planes were evaluated together with sagittal T2 maps for the same regions (MFC, LFC, MTC and LTC) and articular cartilage was evaluated using color scale from red to blue.Intact articular cartilage was defined by the normal signal intensity in different pulse sequences with uniform thickness, while in T2 maps normal knee articular cartilage at different sites generally below 50 milliseconds which corresponds to the green zone on the color scale in our study.Agreement between MRI only VS MRI with T2 mapping sequence had done .there is moderate significant agreement between MRI only VS MRI with T2 mapping sequence.The addition of sagittal T2 maps to standard views improved accuracy in diagnosing cartilage affection in early osteoarthritis. there is 69 (57.5%) lesions diagnosed as grade 0 by MRI only VS 24 (20%) lesions diagnosed as grade 0 by MRI with T2 mapping sequence and 34 (28.3%) lesions diagnosed as grade 1 by MRI only VS 77 (64.2%) lesions diagnosed as grade 1 by MRI with T2 mapping sequence. there is 46 (38.3%) lesions diagnosed as grade 1a by MRI with T2 mapping sequence which diagnosed grade 0 by MRI only.This imaging plane seems to provide a useful addition to standard MR imaging when osteoarthritis is suspected specially among the young population.