Characterization of Proteoglycan Depletion in Femoroacetabular Impingement With T1ρ Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has proven to be one of the best ways to image articular cartilage. A tremendous amount of research has focused on cartilage imaging with an emphasis of early-osteoarthritis (OA) characterization. One of the techniques which has shown great promise is the imaging technique called T1ρ . The advantage of this pulse sequence is that it is sensitive to proteoglycans (PG), a major macromolecule degraded in OA. The study objective is to determine if T1ρ can acutely assess PG content in femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) which may allow physicians to differentiate between normal and early-OA cartilage states in FAI patients.