To illustrate the role of dual energy computed tomography (DECT) with virtual non-calcium imaging technique (VNCa) in detecting bone marrow edema (BME) in the ankle. In this poster both traumatic and non-traumatic patients were evaluated with DECT.Also, associate imaging findings, including osteo-chondral lesions (OCLs) of talar dome, stress fracture or occult fractures were described.The purpose of our study was therefore to assess the diagnostic accuracy values of a third generation DECT scanner in detecting BME in the ankle, by using MRI with STIR sequences as...

Patient population This prospective IRB approved study enrolled 40 consecutive patients. A diagram shows the patients included in the study (fig 1). DECT protocol and post-processing The DECT examinations were performed with a third generation 384-slice dual source CT scanner (Somatom® Definition Force, Siemens Healthcare). The scanning parameters were as follows: tube A 80 kV and tube B 150 kV with a tin filter (tube A, 220 quality reference mAs; tube B, 138 quality reference mAs). Soft-tissue kernel (Qr32) 80-kVp and 150-kVp set images were...

Clinical data of patients enrolled are summarized in table 1 (fig 3). MRI revealed the presence of BME in 25/40 cases (62.5%). BME was depicted in patients with recent trauma in 9/13 cases (69.2%), and in 16/27 patients (59.2%) suffering from chronic pain. The diagnostic accuracy values of DECT on a per-patient analysis are summarized in table 3 (fig 4). Thirty-six of 40 (90.0%) patients were correctly diagnosed (Fig 5) with 2 false positive (fig 6) and 2 false negative (fig 7) findings. The interobserver...

DECT represents an accurate imaging tool for demonstration of BME of the ankle when compared to MRI both in the acute and chronic settings.