[Imaging of the hip joint hyaline cartilage with MR tomography using a gradient echo sequence with fat-water phase...

We have been able to display the hyaline hip joint cartilage clearly and with high signal strength in the magnetic resonance image with a gradient echo sequence with 2 different fresh hip specimens from corpses and with 10 healthy test subjects (5 m, 5 f). The chemical shift artifact at the bone-cartilage boundary could be clearly reduced by optimizing the geometrical scanning parameters. A comparison between the cartilage thickness at the head of the femur measured on the anatomical specimen with the thickness measured in the magnetic resonance tomogram showed a good correlation on suitable selection of the read-out gradient. The hyaline cartilage at the head of the femur could be differentiated from the acetabular cartilage in the region of the loading zone by magnetic resonance tomography in all 10 test subjects.