The presence of healthy cartilage in the knee joint, featuring smooth articular surfaces, is crucial for normal physiological knee function. However, noninvasive in-vivo assessment of cartilage quality in the knee remains challenging and has not been thoroughly investigated. We aimed to illustrate two clinical cases, a 62-year-old male and a 67-year-old male, presented to the orthopaedic outpatient clinic with severe knee complaints. The novel combination of sodium fluoride-18 positron emission tomography/computed tomography and intra-articular injection of a contrast agent (Na[18F]F-PET/CT arthrography) was performed to evaluate cartilage defects of the knee as part of a prospective patient study. The lesion size observed on the Na[18F]F-PET was substantially larger compared to the findings on CT. This might indicate that Na[18F]F-PET/CT arthrography was able to image osseous and chondral pathological changes in an early stage and in a single procedure. Na[18F]F-PET/CT arthrography is a promising imaging technique and might extend the diagnostic potential of nuclear and radiological imaging in the evaluation of cartilage defects.
Keywords: Arthrography; Cartilage degeneration; Knee; Na[18F]F-PET/CT; [18F]-sodium fluoride.
© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of University of Washington.