Diagnostic of Rotator Cuff Calcific Tendinosis Using MRI With ZTE Sequence

Conventional radiographs are still considered the reference for identifying rotator cuff calcific tendinosis.

MRI is widely performed for rotator cuff disorders evaluation but has a moderate accuracy in rotator cuff calcific tendinosis diagnosis and calcific deposits identification (sensitivity and specificity around 60%), even though it helps in determining acuity of the finding by adjacent soft tissue edema depiction and differential diagnosis identification (i.e. adhesive capsulitis, sub-acromial bursitis...).

Zero echo time (ZTE) MRI provides enhanced bone contrast by enabling the acquisition of signals from tissues exhibiting the shortest T2 values on a single sequence with a spatial resolution of 0.8-1.2 mm isotropic and can therefore provide images similar to those obtained with radiographs.

We hypothesize that ZTE images could also depict rotator cuff calcific tendinosis, but to our knowledge, no study compared this technique to radiographs and/or standard MRI.