ArticleArthritis research & therapy2019
Do musculoskeletal ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging identify synovitis and tenosynovitis at the same joints and tendons? A comparative study in early inflammatory arthritis and clinically suspect arthralgia.
Article in Arthritis research & therapy, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- An ultrasound negative for subclinical synovitis in arthralgia patients: is it helpful in identifying those not developing arthritis?Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2022Pooled it
- [Rheumatoid arthritis-more than just a joint disease : Overview for internal medicine practice].Innere Medizin (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Diagnostic Accuracy and Concordance of Standardized vs. Non-Standardized Joint Physical Examination for Assessing Disease Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Paired Comparison Using Ultrasound as Reference Standard.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Imaging of Peripheral Arthritis: Special Focus on Differences in Inflammatory Lesions Between Rheumatoid Arthritis and Psoriatic Arthritis.Korean journal of radiology · 2025Review
- Novel association of chilblains with inflammatory arthritis- series of three cases and review of literature.Rheumatology international · 2025Review
- Reliability and Availability of the 2017 EULAR-OMERACT Scoring System for Ultrasound Synovitis Assessment: Results From a Training and Reading Exercise.Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine · 2025Article
- Joint swelling in the hand in rheumatoid arthritis: agreement between clinical evaluation, ultrasonography, magnetic resonance imaging and patient self-evaluation.Rheumatology international · 2024Article
- Multimodal PA/US imaging in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Enhanced correlation with clinical scores.Photoacoustics · 2024Article
- Article
- High-resolution ultrasound and MRI in the evaluation of the forefoot and midfoot.Journal of ultrasonography · 2023Article
- Added value of high-resolution ultrasound and MRI in the evaluation of rheumatologic diseases.Journal of ultrasonography · 2023Article
- Predictive Value of Magnetic Resonance Imaging-detected Tenosynovitis of the Metacarpophalangeal and Wrist Joints for the Development of Rheumatoid Arthritis among Patients with Undifferentiated Arthritis.Internal medicine (Tokyo, Japan) · 2023Article
- Towards a simplified fluid-sensitive MRI protocol in small joints of the hand in early arthritis patients: reliability between modified Dixon and regular Gadolinium enhanced TSE fat saturated MRI-sequences.Skeletal radiology · 2023Article
- Ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging of hands in systemic sclerosis: A cross-sectional analytical study of prevalence of inflammatory changes in patients with subclinical arthropathy.Journal of scleroderma and related disorders · 2023Article
- ACPA-negative and ACPA-positive RA patients achieving disease resolution demonstrate distinct patterns of MRI-detected joint-inflammation.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Hand and foot MRI in contemporary undifferentiated arthritis: in which patients is MRI valuable to detect rheumatoid arthritis early? A large prospective study.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- The value of MRI for detecting subclinical joint inflammation in clinically suspect arthralgia.RMD open · 2022Review
- MRI-detected synovitis of the small joints predicts rheumatoid arthritis development in large joint undifferentiated inflammatory arthritis.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Pre-RA: Can early diagnosis lead to prevention?Best practice & research. Clinical rheumatology · 2022Review
- When and how should we use imaging in individuals at risk of rheumatoid arthritis?Frontiers in medicine · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveUltrasound (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are recommended in the diagnostic process of rheumatoid arthritis. Research on its comparability in early disease phases is scarce. Therefore, we compared synovitis and tenosynovitis detected by US and MRI on joint/tendon level.
methodsEight hundred forty joints and 700 tendons of 70 consecutive patients, presenting with inflammatory arthritis or clinically suspect arthralgia, underwent US and MRI of MCP (2-5), wrist and MTP (1-5) joints at the same day. Greyscale (GS) and power Doppler (PD) synovitis were scored according to the modified Szkudlarek method (combining synovial effusion and hypertrophy) and the recently published EULAR-OMERACT method (synovial hypertrophy regardless of the presence of effusion) on static images. US-detected tenosynovitis was scored according to the OMERACT. MRI scans were scored according to the RAMRIS. Test characteristics were calculated on joint/tendon level with MRI as reference. Cut-off for US scores were ≥ 1 and ≥ 2 and for MRI ≥ 1.
resultsCompared to MRI, GS synovitis according to EULAR-OMERACT (cut-off ≥ 1) had a sensitivity ranging from 29 to 75% for the different joint locations; specificity ranged from 80 to 98%. For the modified Szkudlarek method, the sensitivity was 68-91% and specificity 52-71%. PD synovitis had a sensitivity of 30-54% and specificity 97-99% compared to MRI. The sensitivity to detect GS tenosynovitis was 50-78% and the specificity 80-94%. For PD tenosynovitis, the sensitivity was 19-58% and specificity 98-100%.
conclusionCurrent data showed that US is less sensitive than MRI in the early detection of synovitis and tenosynovitis, but resulted in only few non-specific findings. The higher sensitivity of MRI is at the expense of less accessibility and higher costs.
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