We employed nuclear magnetic resonance imaging in the evaluation of
fourteen children with Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, and found that it
accurately identified infarction of the femoral head and, with appropriate
techniques, could produce an arthrogram-like image of the hip without the
use of ionizing radiation or injection of a contrast agent. Partial
saturation-recovery and inversion-recovery pulse sequences with
two-dimensional Fourier transformation produced the best results. Nuclear
magnetic resonance scanning provides a noninvasive method for the study of
the contours of the hip joint, and may give clearer insight into the
pathophysiology of infarction and revascularization.