An Innovative Approach to Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Wrist

Purpose: Determination of the diagnostic capabilities of a specialized metadevice designed to detect magnetic resonance signs of pathological changes in the hands (including early ones) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Material and methods: The study considered a metadevice for imaging of hands with magnetic induction 1.5 T. 26 people were examined, 10 of whom were studied using a standard coil for examining the knee joint and 16 using a metadevice, magnetic resonance images T₁-VI, T₂-VI, PD FS-VI were obtained. The images were evaluated by radiologists on a 5-point scale Likert.

Results: The images acquired using the metadevice had acceptable and peer-reviewed absolute and relative signal-to-noise ratios with images obtained using a standard pattern at the same resolution deviation and measuring input power at an average of 18 times for 1.5 T. In terms of image quality criteria for the presence/absence of arthritis, the average score for the metadevice (4.33) is slightly higher than the score for the specialized coil (4.25). The lower score of the standard coil, including on the issue of artifacts, indicates a lower susceptibility of the metadevice to various factors that give artifacts on MRI.

Discussion: The analysis of the collected assessments of independent experts indicates that the diagnostic characteristics of magnetic resonance images of the hand obtained using wire-based metadevices (for 1.5 T) are of good and average levels, and are comparable, and also surpass the standard approaches in all criteria.

Conclusions/Conclusion: The assessment of the quality of the obtained images demonstrates the acceptable quality of imaging and reflects the possibility of their application in clinical practice, taking into account ongoing improvements and optimization of the entire set of pulse sequences for MRI of the hand.