Advanced Musculoskeletal Imaging in Clinical Diagnostics

A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Medical Imaging and Theranostics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2025 | Viewed by 683

Special Issue Editor

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Advanced musculoskeletal imaging in clinical diagnostics plays a pivotal role in the accurate diagnosis and treatment of various musculoskeletal disorders. With the advent of advanced imaging techniques, such as MRI, CT, and PET, clinicians are now able to obtain detailed, high-resolution images of the bones, joints, muscles, and tendons. These techniques provide invaluable information on the structure, function, and pathological changes of the musculoskeletal system, enabling early detection and precise assessment of injuries, degenerative diseases, infections, and tumors. The non-invasive nature of these imaging modalities, coupled with their ability to visualize soft tissue structures, has made them indispensable tools in clinical diagnostics.

Dr. Hans-Jonas Meyer
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • musculoskeletal imaging
  • cancer imaging
  • textural analysis
  • radiomics
  • MRI
  • CT
  • PET

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 3744 KiB  
Article
mFFE CT-like MRI Sequences for the Assessment of Vertebral Fractures
by David Ferreira Branco, Hicham Bouredoucen, Marion Hamard, Karel Gorican, Pierre-Alexandre Poletti, Bénédicte Marie Anne Delattre and Sana Boudabbous
Diagnostics 2024, 14(21), 2434; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics14212434 - 30 Oct 2024
Viewed by 545
Abstract
Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance, image quality, and inter- and intra-observer agreement of the 3D T1 multi-echo fast field echo (mFFE) sequence in cervico-thoraco-lumbar vertebral fractures compared with conventional computed tomography (CT) as the gold standard. [...] Read more.
Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance, image quality, and inter- and intra-observer agreement of the 3D T1 multi-echo fast field echo (mFFE) sequence in cervico-thoraco-lumbar vertebral fractures compared with conventional computed tomography (CT) as the gold standard. Methods: We conducted a prospective single-centre study including 29 patients who underwent spinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the surgeon’s request, in addition to CT for vertebral fracture assessment and classification. A 3D T1 mFFE sequence was added to the standard MRI protocol. Consecutively, two readers analyzed the 3D mFFE sequence alone, the 3D mFFE sequence with the entire MRI protocol, including the STIR and T1 sequences, and, finally, the CT images in random order and 1 month apart. A standardized assessment was performed to determine the presence or absence of a fracture, its location, its classification according to the Genant and AO classifications for traumatic and osteoporotic fractures, respectively, the loss of height of the anterior and posterior walls of the vertebral body, and the presence of concomitant disco-ligamentous lesions. Contingency tables, intraclass correlation coefficients, and Cohen’s kappa tests were used for statistical analysis. Results: A total of 25 fractures were recorded (48% cervical, 20% thoracic, and 32% lumbar), of which 52% were classified A, according to the AO classification system. The quality of the 3D mFFE image was good or excellent in 72% of cases. Inter-observer agreement was near perfect (0.81–1) for vertebral body height and for AO and Genant classifications for all modalities. Intra-observer agreement was strong-to-near perfect between CT and the 3D mFFE sequence. Regarding the diagnostic performance of the 3D mFFE sequence, the sensitivity was 0.9200 and 0.9600, the specificity was 0.9843 and 0.9895, and the accuracy was 0.9861 and 0.9769 for Readers 1 and 2, respectively. In addition, up to 40% of intervertebral disc lesions and 33% of ligamentous lesions were detected by the 3D mFFE sequence compared to CT, allowing four AO type A fractures to be reclassified as type B. Conclusions: The 3D mFFE sequence allows accurate diagnosis of vertebral fractures, with superiority over CT in detecting disco-ligamentous lesions and a more precise classification of fractures, which can prompt clinicians to adapt their management despite an image quality that still requires improvement in some cases. Key points: Vertebral fractures and disco-ligamentous lesions can be assessed using CT-like MRI sequences, with 3D T1 mFFE being superior to CT for the detection of disco-ligamentous lesions. CT-like images using the 3D T1 mFFE sequence improve the diagnostic accuracy of bone structures in MRI. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Musculoskeletal Imaging in Clinical Diagnostics)
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