Sports Medicine Imaging

MR plays an important role in returning athletes to the field, particularly as it relates to determining healing of stress-related osseous and soft-tissue injuries. Continued advances in gradient performance, surface coils and pulse sequences make MR even more valuable in assessing suitability of return to play.

MR imaging has been widely used to study the acute effects of sport-related concussion (SRC) on brain structure and function, as well as neurobiological recovery and return to play after SRC*.
A growing number of studies have demonstrated acute alterations in measures of white matter microstructural integrity, cerebral blood flow and brain functional connectivity after SRC that are not visualized using conventional CT or routine MR.

MR lacks ionizing radiation, and is well-suited for longitudinal evaluation of injury in adolescent athletes. The recent introduction of the three dimensional zero-TE (oZTEo) application provides exceptional bone contrast and, like CT, can be reformatted into any arbitrary plane.

AIR™ Recon DL provides high-resolution images with increased SNR at markedly reduced scan times. This technology optimizes the depiction of even small injuries, such as meniscal, labral and ligament tears. The reduction in scan times increases flexibility for individually tailored MR protocols with an additional oZTEo sequence for detailed fracture assessment.