Fig. 3.

Differences in diagnostic confidence. Spatially matched axial images (a: CT; b: DESS image at 3 T MRI; c: DESS image at 7-T MRI) of a 51-year-old man at the level of the posterior part of the medial femoral condyle of the right knee. Arrows highlight a tiny, slightly hyperdense point-shaped chondral CaC deposit (a), with a clearly visible corresponding focal hypointensity at 7-T MRI (c) but with almost no equivalent signal change at 3-T MRI (b), accentuating the—in this case—considerably higher diagnostic confidence for detection of chondral CaC of 7-T MRI compared to 3-T MRI. Both readers scored the calcification as “quite confident” in CT (a), “not confident” in 3-T MRI (b) and “highly confident” in 7-T MRI (c). CaC = calcium crystals, DESS = dual-echo steady state