Application of diffuse optical back reflection spectroscopy for determining articular cartilage thickness in a clinical setting

Ultraviolet-Visible-Near Infrared Spectroscopy May Aid in the Qualitative Assessment of Early-Stage Cartilage Degradation

“…This is mainly because NIR penetrates deeper into the tissue, 14 and the potential of this technique for articular cartilage evaluation has been investigated in a number of applications, such as measurement of the thickness of cartilage and structural changes. 15 , 16 These studies showed that NIR spectra can be used to monitor disease progression in OA and provide better cartilage evaluation. 17 , 18 However, absorbances in NIR spectra are very low and generally arise from a combination of molecular species, which makes it difficult to analyze specific peaks.…”