Comparison of quantitative cartilage measurements acquired on two 3.0T MRI systems from different manufacturers.

Purpose: 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.
Materials and 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).
Conclusion: Two OA surrogate endpoints--average cartilage thickness and cartilage volume--acquired on two 3.0T MRI systems from different manufacturers are comparable.
(Copyright 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)