Comparison of quantitative cartilage measurements acquired on two 3.0T MRI systems from different manufacturers.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the comparability of two osteoarthritis (OA) surrogate endpoints--average cartilage thickness and cartilage volume--acquired from healthy volunteers on two 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems from different manufacturers.


METHODS
Ten knees of five healthy volunteers were scanned on a 3.0T General Electric (GE) and a 3.0T Philips scanner using a fast three-dimensional fat-suppressed spoiled gradient (SPGR) imaging sequence. The acquisition parameters were optimized beforehand and were kept as comparable as possible on both scanners. For quantitative analysis, the average cartilage thickness and volume of the load-bearing regions of the femoral condyles were compared. Data were analyzed using a univariate repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine the effects of position, condyle, and imaging system on the measurements.


RESULTS
The average cartilage thickness and volume of the load-bearing regions of the femoral condyles did not differ between the two different 3.0T MRI systems (P > 0.05). There was no significant effect of position or condyle on the average cartilage thickness measurements (P > 0.05; range = 0.41-0.93) or cartilage volume (P > 0.05; range = 0.14-0.87).


CONCLUSIONS
Two OA surrogate endpoints--average cartilage thickness and cartilage volume--acquired on two 3.0T MRI systems from different manufacturers are comparable.
Kornaat
Peter R
PR
Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands. P.R.Kornaat@lumc.nl
Koo
Seungbum
S
Andriacchi
Thomas P
TP
Bloem
Johan L
JL
Gold
Garry E
GE
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002358:Cartilage, Articular / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007719:Knee Joint / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008280:Magnetics; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values