Purpose or Case Report: Current musculoskeletal MR imagiing utilizes multiple imaging planes and multiple weightings of two-dimensional turbo spin echo (2D TSE) to precisely delineate and characterize intra-articular abnormalities. Three-dimensional (3D) TSE sequences are currently available on most MRI vendor platforms. High resolution isotropic 3D imaging of the small joints reduces partial volume artifacts and allows for the reconstruction in any orientation, thus eliminating the need to acquire additional scans of different orientations with identical tissue contrast. However, the typical trade off of achieving very high resolution (under 0.5mm isotropic) is long acquisition time. Scan time reduction can be achieved with parallel imaging at the expense of reducing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and with increasing the echo train length at the expense of image blurring. The addition of compressed sensing (CS), a recently commercially available acceleration technique, allows for decrease in acquisition time without the significant loss of SNR experienced with identical acceleration factors achieved with parallel imaging alone. CS exploits (1) image data sparsity via application of a sparsity transform of the image data; (2) pseudo-random-type of k-space sampling; (3) non-linear iterative reconstruction. We utilized CS to decrease scan time (range 4:55 to 5:35 minutes) of 3D PD FS TSE sequences to obtain high resolution (voxel size 0.45 x 0.45 x 0.45) imaging of the fingers, toes, wrist and feet. In this educational exhibit, we will review the normal anatomy and pathology of small joints
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