Toward New Assessment of Knee Cartilage Degeneration

Abstract

Objective Assessment of human joint cartilage is a crucial tool to detect and diagnose pathological conditions. This exploratory study developed a workflow for 3D modeling of cartilage and bone based on multimodal imaging. New evaluation metrics were created and, a unique set of data was gathered from healthy controls and patients with clinically evaluated degeneration or trauma. Design We present a novel methodology to evaluate knee bone and cartilage based on features extracted from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) data. We developed patient specific 3D models of the tibial, femoral, and patellar bones and cartilages. Forty-seven subjects with a history of degenerative disease, traumatic events, or no symptoms or trauma (control group) were recruited in this study. Ninety-six different measurements were extracted from each knee, 78 2D and 18 3D measurements. We compare the sensitivity of different metrics to classify the cartilage condition and evaluate degeneration. Results Selected features extracted show significant difference between the 3 groups. We created a cumulative index of bone properties that demonstrated the importance of bone condition to assess cartilage quality, obtaining the greatest sensitivity on femur within medial and femoropatellar compartments. We were able to classify degeneration with a maximum recall value of 95.9 where feature importance analysis showed a significant contribution of the 3D parameters. Conclusion The present work demonstrates the potential for improving sensitivity in cartilage assessment. Indeed, current trends in cartilage research point toward improving treatments and therefore our contribution is a first step toward sensitive and personalized evaluation of cartilage condition.

Correlation between articular cartilage status on outcomes and survivorship following meniscal allograft transplantation: A systematic review

“…In addition, a high degree of heterogeneity was appreciated based on mean follow‐up times, grading systems for cartilage damage, definition of failure, reporting of both cartilage defect size and concomitant cartilage procedures, further limiting the authors' ability to perform any meaningful statistical analyses evaluating the predictive capacity of these variables on outcomes. Indications for MAT were consistent among studies, while the reliability of cartilage status grading has been shown to have questionable reliability [3]. Furthermore, there is a relative scarcity of literature on the topic of MAT in patients with increasing degrees of cartilage damage, which could be explained by the fact that increasing grades of osteoarthritis have been a traditional relative contraindication for MAT procedures.…”

Designing a Synthetic 3D-Printed Knee Cartilage: FEA Model, Micro-Structure and Mechanical Characteristics

“…Patients diagnosed with Degenerative OA (D) and healthy Control subjects (C) were recruited within the EU project RESTORE (https://restore-project.ru.is, accessed 1 July 2022). A further explanation of the acquisition protocol and the facilities utilized is described in a previous work [19].…”