[Diagnostic imaging of cartilage replacement therapy]

Over the past decade a number of surgical interventions for durable cartilage repair have been developed. For the long-term follow-up of this procedures clinical scores and the morphological and biochemical evaluation of biopsies taken during arthroscopy are used.Magnetic resonance imaging is a useful noninvasive tool for the evaluation of the morphologic status of the cartilage repair tissue throughout the postoperative period. The MR imaging appearance of the most important cartilage transplantation techniques, such as autologous osteochondral transplantation, autologous chondrocyte implantation and matrix-based autologous chondrocyte implantation are described and possible complications of each technique are mentioned. The importance of new MR techniques such as high-resolution morphologic imaging and possible visualization of biochemical information of cartilage repair tissue is discussed.