Black line sign

Last revised by B. Keegan Markhardt on 5 Feb 2023

Citation, DOI, disclosures and article data

Citation:

Feger J, Markhardt B, Worsley C, Black line sign. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org (Accessed on 19 Apr 2024) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-83473

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-83473

Permalink:

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/83473

rID:

83473

Article created:

24 Oct 2020, Joachim Feger ◉

Disclosures:

At the time the article was created Joachim Feger had no recorded disclosures.

View Joachim Feger's current disclosures

Last revised:

5 Feb 2023, B. Keegan Markhardt

Disclosures:

At the time the article was last revised B. Keegan Markhardt had no financial relationships to ineligible companies to disclose.

View B. Keegan Markhardt's current disclosures

Revisions:

5 times, by 3 contributors - see full revision history and disclosures

Systems:

Musculoskeletal

Sections:

Signs

Tags:

cases3

Synonyms:

Black line
Dark cartilage lesion
Hypointense signal lesion

The black line sign refers to a hypointense linear area in the articular cartilage on magnetic resonance imaging, first described in the trochlear groove ^1-3.

These lesions have been found also in all other regions of articular cartilage in the knee and not only on T2 weighted images but also in other sequences, e.g. fat-suppressed proton density-weighted images ⁴.

Correlation of these areas with arthroscopy showed that a significant number of hypointense signal linear or non-linear lesions corresponded to areas of cartilage degeneration ⁴.

Therefore, it has been suggested that the black line sign or focal areas of low signal intensity within otherwise healthy-appearing cartilage indicate areas of ‘fissuring’ or ’cartilage degeneration’ ^1-4.