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Abstract Background We aimed to determine if composite structural measures of knee osteoarthritis (KOA) progression on magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can predict the radiographic onset of accelerated knee osteoarthritis. Methods We used data from a nested case-control study among participants from the Osteoarthritis Initiative without radiographic KOA at baseline. Participants were separated into three groups based on radiographic disease progression over 4 years: 1) accelerated (Kellgren-Lawrence grades [KL] 0/1 to 3/4), 2) typical (increase in KL, excluding accelerated osteoarthritis), or 3) no KOA (no change in KL). We assessed tibiofemoral cartilage damage (four regions: medial/lateral tibia/femur), bone marrow lesion (BML) volume (four regions: medial/lateral tibia/femur), and whole knee effusion-synovitis volume on 3 T MR images with semi-automated programs. We calculated two MR-based composite scores. Cumulative damage was the sum of standardized cartilage damage. Disease activity was the sum of standardized volumes of effusion-synovitis and BMLs. We focused on annual images from 2 years before to 2 years after radiographic onset (or a matched time for those without knee osteoarthritis). To determine between group differences in the composite metrics at all time points, we used generalized linear mixed models with group (3 levels) and time (up to 5 levels). For our prognostic analysis, we used multinomial logistic regression models to determine if one-year worsening in each composite metric change associated with future accelerated knee osteoarthritis (odds ratios [OR] based on units of 1 standard deviation of change). Results Prior to disease onset, the accelerated KOA group had greater average disease activity compared to the typical and no KOA groups and this persisted up to 2 years after disease onset. During a pre-radiographic disease period, the odds of developing accelerated KOA were greater in people with worsening disease activity [versus typical KOA OR (95% confidence interval [CI]): 1.58 (1.08 to 2.33); versus no KOA: 2.39 (1.55 to 3.71)] or cumulative damage [versus typical KOA: 1.69 (1.14 to 2.51); versus no KOA: 2.11 (1.41 to 3.16)]. Conclusions MR-based disease activity and cumulative damage metrics may be prognostic markers to help identify people at risk for accelerated onset and progression of knee osteoarthritis.
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Identification of Knee Cartilage Changing Pattern
This paper studied the changing pattern of knee cartilage using 3D knee magnetic resonance (MR) images over a 12-month period. As a pilot study, we focused on the medial tibia compartment of the knee joint. To quantify the thickness of cartilage in this compartment, we utilized two methods: one was measurement through manual segmentation of cartilage on each slice of the 3D MR sequence; the other was measurement through cartilage damage index (CDI), which quantified the thickness on a few informative locations on cartilage. We employed the artificial neural networks (ANNs) to model the changing pattern of cartilage thickness. The input feature space was composed of the thickness information at a cartilage location as well as its neighborhood from baseline year data. The output categories were ‘changed’ and ‘no-change’, based on the thickness difference at the same location between the baseline year and the 12-month follow-up data. Different ANN models were trained by using CDI features and manual segmentation features. Further, for each type of feature, individual models were trained at different subregions of the medial tibia compartment, i.e., the bottom part, the middle part, the upper part, and the whole. Based on the experiment results, we found that CDI features generated better prediction performance than manual segmentation, on both whole medial tibia compartment and any subregion. For CDI, the best performance in term of AUC was obtained using the central CDI locations (AUC = 0.766), while the best performance for manual segmentation was obtained using all slices of the 3D MR sequence (AUC = 0.656). As experiment results showed, the CDI method demonstrated a stronger pattern of cartilage change than the manual segmentation method, which required up to 6-hour manual delineation of all MRI slices. The result should be further validated by extending the experiment to other compartments.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1723420
- PAR ID:
- 10169685
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Applied Sciences
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 17
- ISSN:
- 2076-3417
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3469
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/app9173469
