Comparison between 2D radiographic weight-bearing joint space widthand 3D MRI non-weight-bearing cartilage thickness measures in the knee usingnon-weight-bearing 2D and 3D CT as an intermediary

摘要

In knee osteoarthritis, radiographic joint space width (JSW) is frequentlyused as a surrogate marker for cartilage thickness; however, longitudinalchanges in radiographic JSW have shown poor correlations with those ofmagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cartilage thickness. There are fundamentaldifferences between the techniques: radiographic JSW representstwo-dimensional (2D), weight-bearing, bone-to-bone distance, while on MRIthree-dimensional (3D) non-weight-bearing cartilage thickness is measured.In this exploratory study, computed tomography (CT) was included as a thirdtechnique, as it can measure bone-to-bone under non-weight-bearingconditions. The objective was to use CT to compare the impact ofweight-bearing versus non-weight-bearing, as well asbone-to-bone JSW versus actual cartilage thickness, in theknee.