Ca. Mcgibbon et al., A GENERAL COMPUTING METHOD FOR SPATIAL CARTILAGE THICKNESS FROM COPLANAR MRI, Medical engineering & physics, 20(3), 1998, pp. 169-176
Techniques for assessing cartilage thickness from planar magnetic reso
nance (MR) images have traditionally accounted for surface curvature o
nly in the image plane. Many joints, such as the knee and hip, have si
gnificant curvature normal (transverse) to the image plane which resul
ts in overestimation of in-plane cartilage thickness measurements. We
developed a generalized computing method for calculating spatial thick
ness distribution of joint cartilage from co-planar MR images which ac
counts for transverse surface curvature. We applied the technique usin
g fat-suppressed SPGR (spoiled gradient recalled in the steady-state)
MR images of two human acetabulae and compared the results with a prev
iously validated spherical model of the acetabulum which also accounts
for transverse curvature of the cartilage surface. The agreement betw
een the generalized model and validated spherical model was very good
for both acetabular specimens (correlation: r = 0.998, p < 0.001; diff
erences: p > 0.63). We conclude that the generalized method is accepta
ble for computing spatial cartilage thickness distribution of joints w
ith complex geometries, such as the knee. (C) 1998 IPEM. published by
Elsevier Science Ltd.