New techniques for cartilage imaging: T2 relaxation time and diffusion-weighted MR imaging.

In view of recent therapeutic approaches to cartilage damage in osteoarthritis, it is necessary to develop and further refine noninvasive quantitative tools for specific diagnosis and follow-up studies. There is considerable experimental and some clinical experience with T2 relaxation time measurements. Motivation for diffusion-weighted imaging and diffusion-tensor imaging as comparably new techniques for cartilage imaging is to obtain directly additional three-dimensional architectural and directional information about the cartilage matrix.