COMPARISON OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL POWER DOPPLER ULTRASONOGRAPHY OF SYNOVIAL VASCULARITY WITH CONTRAST ENHANCED MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING IN PATIENTS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

Purpose: The recent introduction of potent joint-protective therapies for the management of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) created new demands for the sensitivity and precision of predicting and monitoring synovitis and erosive damage. Since vasodilation and alteration of the synovial microvasculature (angiogenesis) are early events in RA indicating inflammatory activity, imaging techniques such as contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and power Doppler ultrasonography (PDUS) including three-dimensional (3D) imaging are promising tools to assess and monitor arthritic activity [1,2]. We comp…