The protons in collagen-rich musculoskeletal (MSK) tissues such as the Achilles tendon are subject to strong dipolar interactions which are modulated by the term (3cos2 θ-1) where θ is the angle between the fiber orientation and the static magnetic field B0 . The purpose of this study was to investigate the magic angle effect in three-dimensional ultrashort echo time Cones Adiabatic T1ρ (3D UTE Cones-AdiabT1ρ ) imaging of the Achilles tendon using a clinical 3 T scanner. The magic angle effect was investigated by Cones-AdiabT1ρ imaging of five cadaveric human Achilles tendon samples at five angular orientations ranging from 0° to 90° relative to the B0 field. Conventional Cones continuous wave T1ρ (Cones-CW-T1ρ ) and Cones T2 * (Cones-T2 *) sequences were also applied for comparison. On average, Cones-AdiabT1ρ increased 3.6-fold from 13.6 ± 1.5 ms at 0° to 48.4 ± 5.4 ms at 55°, Cones-CW-T1ρ increased 6.1-fold from 7.0 ± 1.1 ms at 0° to 42.6 ± 5.2 ms at 55°, and Cones-T2* increased 12.3-fold from 2.9 ± 0.5 ms at 0° to 35.8 ± 6.4 ms at 55°. Although Cones-AdiabT1ρ is still subject to significant angular dependence, it shows a much-reduced magic angle effect compared to Cones-CW-T1ρ and Cones-T2 *, and may be used as a novel and potentially more effective approach for quantitative evaluation of the Achilles tendon and other MSK tissues.
Keywords: Achilles tendon; AdiabT1ρ; CW-T1ρ; MSK; T2*; magic angle; quantitative evaluation; ultrashort echo time.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.