Focal cartilage defect progression detection: measurement of precision and variation in natural characteristics of cartilage thickness maps derived from 3D MRI data

The objective of this work was to develop a procedure for detecting focal and local thickness cartilage changes due to osteoarthritis (OA). These measurements are used to quantify the disease progression over time. Therefore, it is essential to establish a method for measuring the precision of such changes for each subject involved in a longitudinal study. Secondly, we have developed a method which establishes the variation in natural characteristics, such as shape and thickness within a set of normal and mild OA cartilage thickness maps. This method will allow the analysis of disease progression over time and among subjects participating in clinical studies. Both procedures depend on a previously validated segmentation and computation of the cartilage thickness maps from three dimensional multispectral MRI data.