Quantitative UTE Imaging of the Meniscus Across Different Zones: A Study on Knee Osteoarthritis

Motivation: Investigating compositional changes in each meniscal vascular zone at various stages of degeneration provides valuable insights into the progression of knee osteoarthritis. However, conventional sequences with relatively long TEs are suboptimal for this purpose due to the menisci's short T2. Goal(s): To investigate the correlation between UTE biomarkers and osteoarthritic degeneration in each meniscal zone using quantitative UTE imaging techniques. Approach: UTE imaging techniques, including UTE-T1, UTE-MT modeling, UTE-AdiabT1ρ, and UTE-T2*, were used to quantitatively assess meniscal degeneration in vivo. Results: T1, T1ρ, and T2* demonstrate a significant positive correlation with meniscal degeneration grades, whereas MMF shows a significant negative correlation. Impact: This study, to our knowledge is the first to employ UTE-T1, UTE-MT modeling, UTE-AdiabT1ρ, and UTE-T2*to investigate compositional changes of each of the 3 vascular zones of the meniscus due to osteoarthritis.