Case study from a 20-year old patient from Belgium with severe pelvic pain.
Sacral bone marrow edema was seen on T1- and fat-suppressed T2-weighted MR images (Figure 1A and 1B). An additional 3D sequence for synthetic CT (sCT) reconstruction was also obtained, that is, 3D T1-weighted radio-frequency spoiled multiple gradient-echo sequence (T1MGE). The reconstructed sCT images (Figure 1C) clearly depicted the sacral fracture (arrows) that was suspected due to bone marrow edema.
Utrecht, September 27, 2022 – Healthcare professionals and researchers from UZ Gent Hospital in Belgium published the case study “MRI AI Use Case: Synthetic CT Images for Fracture Evaluation”. It concerns a 20-year-old woman that was referred to the emergency department after a fall from a height of 4 metres. She had severe pelvic pain and could not bear weight on the left leg. X-rays showed no fracture.
Since she suffered from neurological complaints, a pelvic MRI scan was performed. Sacral bone marrow edema was seen on T1- and fat-suppressed T2-weighted MR images (fig 1A and 1B). An additional 3D sequence for BoneMRI reconstruction (fig. 1C) was also obtained and it clearly confirmed the sacral fracture that was suspected due to bone marrow edema.
The study concludes, “This demonstrates the potential of BoneMRI imaging as a harmless, radiation-free alternative to classic CT imaging to (re)evaluate fractures or other lesions of the cortical bone. The absence of ionizing radiation, its high similarity of the sCT images with classic CT and the one-stop-shop visualisation of soft tissues and bones alike make sCT imaging very appealing as a potential future technique for clinical practice.”