In vivo precision of quantitative shoulder cartilage measurements, and changes after spinal cord injury

Abstract

Recent advances in MRI have enabled the quantitative assessment of articular cartilage morphology in human joints. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the precision of quantitative shoulder cartilage measurements is sufficient to detect changes between and within patients, and that shoulder cartilage thickness in paraplegic patients increases due to increased loading. We imaged the shoulders of seven healthy volunteers four times using a coronal 3D, fat-suppressed, gradient-echo sequence. The humeral head cartilage in seven paraplegic patients was evaluated soon after injury and 1 year post injury. A precision of 4.5% (root mean square (RMS) average coefficient of variation (CV) %) was found for shoulder cartilage thickness measurements in the humeral head. Whereas a significant decrease of cartilage thickness (-11%, P < 0.05) was observed in the knee, there was no significant change in articular cartilage thickness in the shoulder (-1.1%).

Morphometric characterization of murine articular cartilage—Novel application of confocal laser scanning microscopy

“…Other measurement and analysis systems, such as MRI and lCT, report PE %CV s of 2.2-9.8% [(MR human shoulder) (Vanwanseele et al, 2004)], 1.5-2.5% [(MR human knee) (Eckstein et al, 2002)], 0.59-5.24% [(lCT . A 2D projection of sample where the lateral surface was scraped with a scalpel blade to remove the cartilage from the underlying.…”

Quantitative Analysis of Local Changes in Patellar Cartilage in Spinal Cord Injured Subjects

“…In contrast, no changes could be found in the shoulder. 20 Animal studies demonstrate large topological variation in morphological, biochemical, and biomechanical characteristics of articular cartilage and also in the response of cartilage to immobilization and remobilization. 10 Contact areas and loading during daily activities are different in the medial and lateral facet, and the superior and inferior region of the patella.…”

“…6,7,11 The ability to determine local changes in articular cartilage is not only important for the accurate diagnosis of osteoarthritis, but can also be crucial for the evaluation of therapies, such as osteochondral autografts, autologous chondrocyte implants, and artificial tissue repair. Other studies that have investigated the longterm functional adaptation to specific mechanical demands, 9,14,[19][20][21] or the instant reaction of cartilage to physiological exercises, could also benefit from a more local analysis of the cartilage morphology. 4 Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have allowed for quantitative assessment of articular cartilage morphology in human joints.…”

A quantitative study of humeral cartilage in individuals with spinal cord injury

“…These measurement errors are comparable to those previously reported in the knee, 20 but are much smaller than those in another shoulder study. 17 The reasons for the high reproducibility compared to the shoulder study of Vanwanseele et al 17 may be that repeated measurements were not taken into account and that only a part of the humeral head was segmented. The coefficient of variance for the minimum joint space was worse than the one for the humeral cartilage, as only one thickness determined the result, and not an average value.…”

“…Although the joint is loaded more frequently, no change of humeral cartilage thickness of patients with paraplegia after one year postinjury was observed. 17 As shown in the knee joint, quantitative MR imaging is a powerful method with high reproducibility to evaluate morphological changes of cartilage (for example, thickness, volume) in healthy volunteers. 18 Furthermore, validation has been performed for the shoulder joint.…”