MRI T2 RELAXATION TIME EVALUATION OF WRIST CARTILAGE WITH SCAPHOLUNATE LIGAMENT INJURY IN THE PRE-OPERATIVE AND POST-OPERATIVE STATE

Abstract

The overall goal of this research was to develop a method to non-invasively assess the cartilage of subjects exhibiting unilateral scapholunate dissociation. The research was completed with the hope of identifying the health status of the cartilage to aid in wrist injury assessment, treatment, and prevention of the osteoarthritis that often results from injury. A custom Matlab code was developed to calculate the transverse relaxation time, T2, of cartilage in the wrist of the normal and injured wrists, in both pre-operation and post-operation scans. In the pre-operation study analysis, elevated T2 values were observed in the injured wrist cartilage from the normal wrist values. The study analyzing correlations between pre-operation and post-operation scans resulted in elevated T2 values observed in the post-operation injured wrists from the post-operation normal wrists. There was also a significant rise in injured wrist T2 values between the pre-operation and post-operation scans. Continued data collection with enrollment of additional subjects will add to the significance of the results. The results indicate that calculating the T2 value of cartilage may be an effective method of determining cartilage health status.