Methods for evaluating the progression of osteoarthritis

This article discusses methods for evaluating the progression of osteoarthr itis through dynamic functional imaging as opposed to current static techni ques. Comparison is made between static and dynamic methods of evaluating k nee alignment. The correlation between dynamic knee moments during gait and bone mineral content is discussed. Knee loading is considered in terms of high tibial osteotomy, knee braces, pain, and non-steroidal anti-inflammato ry drugs. New image-processing techniques for quantitating cartilage loss a re described, and computational methods for generating true three-dimension al (3-D) maps of cartilage thickness are developed. Finally, new approaches to cross-correlate magnetic resonance images with kinematic measurements a re described. These new techniques promise to become powerful diagnostic to ols to detect and characterize pathological load distributions across artic ular cartilage.