Traumatic articular cartilage lesions of the knee are common in young professional Russian athletes. These lesions may lead to development of osteoarthritis in young age. Hyaline cartilage is an important intraarticular tissue that may be involved in traumatic injury to and degenerative change in the knee joint.Damaged cartilage rarely heals spontaneously, and its subsequent degeneration in association with degeneration of other articular tissues may lead to knee osteoarthritis.MRI is an important tool in the diagnosis and grading of sports-related articular cartilage injury. The purpose of...

MRI was performed on 44 young athletes with knee trauma (anterior cruciate ligament tears, meniscal tears). Study was performed using 1,5T MR MagnetomAvanto (Siemens). We evaluated the articular cartilage of patella, medial and lateral femoral, and medial and lateral tibial cartilage. Standart protocol: proton density-weighted sequences with fat saturation in three planes, T2 FLASH (GRE) in sagittal plane. These sequences were used for morphological analysis of the knee. To evaluate the collagen network in the knee cartilage matrix we used T2 mapping in three planes...

Proton density–weighted and T2-weightedfast SE imaging techniques are well suited formorphologic assessments of articular cartilageas well as menisci and ligamentous structures. T2 of hyaline articular cartilage reflects interactions among water molecules and between water molecules and surrounding macromolecules and is highly sensitive to alterations of the cartilage matrix. In routine clinical practice, fat-suppressed images are most commonly used sequences for evaluating articular cartilage. In cartilage imaging, fat suppression techniques provide increased contrast at the subchondral bone–cartilage interface. Proton-density sequences provide higher overall signal intensity in...

T2-mapping may be used to differentiate normal areas of articular cartilage from areas of degenerations, grading articular knee cartilage defects and help in prevention of osteoarthritis progression in young professional Russian athletes.

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