Investigative radiology
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Investigative radiology · Jul 2012
T2* mapping of acetabular and femoral hip joint cartilage at 3 T: a prospective controlled study.
The aim of this study was to identify the pattern of T2* values in acetabular and femoral head cartilage in morphologically normal and abnormal zones at 3 T. ⋯ In combination with a 3-T system, T2* mapping offers unique advantages such as high image resolution and the ability of 3D biochemically sensitive cartilage evaluation in the hip joint without the need for contrast medium. Given these advantages, we believe that T2* mapping is another welcome addition to the rapidly evolving era of hip cartilage biochemical imaging. Further studies are necessary that involve a diagnostic histological analysis as gold standard for comparison.
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Investigative radiology · Jul 2012
Normalized metal artifact reduction in head and neck computed tomography.
Artifacts from dental hardware affect image quality and the visualization of lesions in the oral cavity and oropharynx in computed tomography (CT). Therefore, magnetic resonance imaging is considered the imaging modality of choice in this region. Standard methods for metal artifact reduction (MAR) in CT replace the metal-affected raw data by interpolation, which is prone to new artifacts. We developed a generalized normalization technique for MAR (NMAR) that aims to suppress algorithm-induced artifacts and validated the performance of this algorithm in a clinical trial. ⋯ Normalized MAR has the potential to improve image quality in patients with artifacts from dental hardware and to improve the diagnostic accuracy of CT of the oral cavity and oropharynx.