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Layer-specific analysis of femorotibial cartilage t2 relaxation time based on registration of segmented double echo steady state (dess) to multi-echo-spin-echo (mese) images

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Abstract

Objective

To develop and validate a 3D registration approach by which double echo steady state (DESS) MR images with cartilage thickness segmentations are used to extract the cartilage transverse relaxation time (T2) from multi-echo-spin-echo (MESE) MR images, without direct segmentations for MESE.

Materials and methods

Manual DESS segmentations of 89 healthy reference knees (healthy) and 60 knees with early radiographic osteoarthritis (early ROA) from the Osteoarthritis Initiative were registered to corresponding MESE images that had independent direct T2 segmentations. For validation purposes, (a) regression analysis of deep and superficial cartilage T2 was performed and (b) between-group differences between healthy vs. early ROA knees were compared for registered vs. direct MESE analysis.

Results

Moderate to high correlations were observed for the deep (r = 0.80) and the superficial T2 (r = 0.81), with statistically significant between-group differences (ROA vs. healthy) of + 1.4 ms (p = 0.002) vs. + 1.3 ms (p < 0.001) for registered vs. direct T2 segmentation in the deep, and + 1.3 ms (p = 0.002) vs. + 2.3 ms (p < 0.001) in the superficial layer.

Discussion

This registration approach enables extracting cartilage T2 from MESE scans using DESS (cartilage thickness) segmentations, avoiding the need for direct MESE T2 segmentations.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Ludwig Bolzmann Gesellschaft for funding this study and would like to thank the OAI participants, OAI study investigators, and OAI Clinical Center staff for generating this publicly available image sets.

Funding

This work was funded by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Arthritis and Rehabilitation, Austria. The MRI acquisition of data used in this analysis was funded by the Osteoarthritis Initiative, a public–private partnership comprised of five contracts (N01-AR-2-2258; N01-AR-2-2259; N01-AR-2-2260; N01-AR-2-2261; N01-AR-2-2262) funded by the National Institutes of Health, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, and conducted by the Osteoarthritis Initiative study Investigators. Private funding partners of the OAI include Merck Research Laboratories, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer, Inc. Private-sector funding for the Osteoarthritis Initiative is managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. The sponsors were not involved in the design and conduct of this particular study, in the analysis and interpretation of the data, and in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Arthritis and Rehabilitation, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria

    David Fürst, Wolfang Wirth & Felix Eckstein

  2. Department of Imaging & Functional Musculoskeletal Research, Institute of Anatomy, Cell Biology, Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg & Nuremberg, Strubergasse 21, 5020, Salzburg, Austria

    David Fürst, Wolfang Wirth & Felix Eckstein

  3. Chondrometrics GmbH, Ainring, Germany

    David Fürst, Wolfang Wirth & Felix Eckstein

  4. Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Akshay Chaudhari

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  1. David Fürst
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Contributions

Fürst: Study conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting of the manuscript; Wirth: Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting of the manuscript, Critical revision; Chaudhari: Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting of the manuscript, Critical revision; Eckstein: Study conception and design, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting of the manuscript, Critical revision.

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Correspondence to David Fürst.

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Conflict of interest

David Fürst and Wolfgang Wirth have a part-time employment with Chondrometrics GmbH; Wolfgang Wirth is a co-owner of Chondrometrics GmbH and has provided consulting services to Galapagos. Felix Eckstein is CEO of Chondrometrics GmbH, a company providing MR image analysis services to academic researchers and industry. He has provided consulting services to Merck KGaA, Abbvie, Tissuegene, Servier, Roche, Galapagos, and Novartis. Akshay Chaudhari has provided consulting services to SkopeMR, Inc., Subtle Medical, Chondrometrics GmbH, Image Analysis Group, and Culvert Engineering; and is a shareholder of Subtle Medical, LVIS Corporation, and BrainKey Inc.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the OAI.

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Fürst, D., Wirth, W., Chaudhari, A. et al. Layer-specific analysis of femorotibial cartilage t2 relaxation time based on registration of segmented double echo steady state (dess) to multi-echo-spin-echo (mese) images. Magn Reson Mater Phy 33, 819–828 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-020-00852-6

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