Injury to articular cartilage has a high prevalence in the general population and athletes. The use of a scaffold-free tissue-engineered compound (TEC) avoided the need for a scaffold and turn the procedure safer. The assessment of the treatment of chondral lesions can be performed non-invasively with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows the analysis of the morphology and composition of the repair tissue. This study aims to evaluate cartilage regeneration with TEC using magnetic resonance imaging.
A cartilage defect on both knees was performed on miniature pigs. TEC was applied to one knee of each animal, totalizing 14 knees with TEC (experimental group) and 14 with chondral defect only (defect group). After 6 months, Magnetic resonance imaging was performed to evaluate morphology and repair quality and compositional characteristics. Lastly, cartilage repair was evaluated through histology using the ICRS-2 score.
The mean value of MOCART in the group submitted to the defect without treatment was 46.2 ± 13.4, while the group treated with TEC had a mean score of 62.3 ± 12.3 (p<0.001). The compositional evaluation by T2 mapping showed that the repair tissue of the experimental group has a mean T2 value (53,42 ± 2,1) close to the mean T2 value of healthy cartilage (54,73 ± 2,28). And the mean T2 value of the repair area (50,98 ± 2,48) was significantly different from the mean T2 value of healthy cartilage (54,49 ± 1,72) in the defect group.
The evaluation of morphology and composition by magnetic resonance and histological analysis showed that the cartilage defect treated with tissue engineering construct was responsible for greater coverage and better quality of the defect compared to the untreated group.