Quantitative measurement of femoral condyle cartilage in the knee by MRI: Validation study by multireaders

Purpose To determine reproducibility of the femoral condyle cartilage volume (CV) in cross‐sectional and longitudinal studies using various 3D imaging techniques at 1.5 T and 3 T. Materials and Methods In 21 subjects with osteoarthritis, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including four different sequences (sagittal 3D fat suppressed spoiled gradient‐echo [SPGR] at 1.5 T, fat suppressed fast low angle shot [FLASH] at 3 T, water‐excitation dual echo steady state [DESS] at 3 T, and water‐excitation multiecho data image combination [MEDIC] at 3 T) were acquired at baseline and ∼1 year later. The CV measured using semiautomated segmentation software by three readers was analyzed. Results The mean of the interclass correlation coefficient between each reader from SPGR, FLASH, DESS, and MEDIC was 0.899, 0.948, 0.943, and 0.954, respectively. The mean CV (×104 mm3) measured by each reader from SPGR/FLASH/DESS/MEDIC sequences was the following in this order: 1.34/1.52/1.50/1.35, 1.21/1.43/1.40/1.27, 1.22/1.37/1.36/1.22, and 1.17/1.36/1.35/1.21 by readers 1, 2, 3 (first analysis), and 3 (second analysis), respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in CV between any readers in any sequences. The CV measured on FLASH and DESS tended to be greater than that on SPGR or MEDIC. Conclusion Inter‐ and intraobserver reproducibility of cartilage segmentation using semiautomated software was validated. Although there was no statistical significance, there was a tendency of under‐ or overestimating CV by each sequence. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2014;39:972–977. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.