Editorial for "Diffusion Tensor Imaging for Quantitative Assessment of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury Grades and Graft".
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Tears to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) are common and serious knee injuries which tend to occur in young, active individuals. They result in functional impairment and require a period of relative immobilisation followed by rehabilitation, often leading to surgery. Individuals suffering from an ACL injury also have a higher risk of developing osteoarthritis as a long-term consequence(1, 2). ACL reconstructive surgery using a tendon graft remains the clinical standard of care to provide stability to the knee joint and allow patients to return to sport quicker. However, the question of when to allow patients to return to high-level sport remains hotly debated, as the risk of sustaining a second ACL rupture following reconstructive surgery is highest within the subsequent two years(3). While conventional MRI methods continue to provide high diagnostic structural information for ACL injuries, they are unable to deliver advanced quantitative measures required for biological tissue characterisation and longitudinal observation of graft maturation. Promising techniques such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), are used for research purposes only and have not yet made the translation into routine clinical application.
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1522-2586