Assessing the healing of juvenile osteochondritis dissecans lesions quantitatively with a 7T 3D MRI sequence and T2* mapping

Motivation: Juvenile osteochondritis dissecans (JOCD) heals naturally in some patients, but requires surgery with others. Currently, no protocol exists to determine early if a child needs early surgical intervention, which leads to a waiting period where patients suffer prolonged pain. Goal(s): Differentiate healing JOCD lesions from non-healers without surgical intervention using T2* mapping analysis. Approach: Segment JOCD lesions on 3D 7T T2* MRI scans longitudinally and analyze T2* values of the region of interest to determine significant changes for healers. Results: Healing lesions showed a decrease in T2* over time. Non-healing lesions showed an increase in T2* values. Impact: We found that JOCD lesions can be differentiated as healers or non-healers, as early as 3 months, by utilizing T2* mapping with 7T MRI. Previously, this was not possible at the 1.5T and 3T standards widely used by clinicians.