Diagnosis of Giant Cell Tumor of the Tendon Sheath Using Multiecho Gradient-Echo Sequence: The "superblooming Artifact"

Giant cell tumor of the tendon sheath is a tumor, which affects mainly the hands of people aged 30 to 50 years with a female prevalence. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is essential for diagnosis and treatment planning. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of multiecho gradient-echoes (MeGE) sequence in detecting hemosiderin which is the hallmark of this tumor. MRIs were performed in a sample of 11 patients with a mean age of 45. With the proposed protocol, all readers were able to detect the susceptibility artifacts due to the presence of hemosiderin. MeGE sequence allows to highlight the presence of hemosiderin, and the use of 3 echo times (ET) (8, 16, and 24 ms) is suggested.