Development of imaging biomarkers for knee osteoarthritis; Radiographs, DXA and MRI Active Shape and Appearance Models

这个项目旨在通过观察膝关节的形状和外观来寻找更好的方法来观察骨性关节炎。关节的形状告诉我们很多关于其健康状况的信息；骨关节炎会使关节变平和变形，当人们在关节上负重时会引起疼痛，但某些形状可能会反映出骨关节炎的早期迹象，或者是某人未来有患骨关节炎的风险的迹象。然而，很难完全描述复杂结构的形状，例如使用几个长度、宽度和角度来描述膝关节。为了建立膝关节形状和外观的计算机模型，我们将使用图像分析技术，用于其他应用，如面部识别。目前，治疗骨性关节炎的唯一有效方法是关节置换。除了止痛外，目前还没有有效的药物可用。不幸的是，由于骨关节炎是一种复杂的疾病，在早期阶段很难识别，而且进展往往相当缓慢，制药公司经常认为进行药物试验过于昂贵和耗时。我们希望发现，膝关节的形状和外观可以用来测量比目前可能的疾病严重程度更小的变化，以及它是否可以用来识别高危？我们将比较膝关节的二维和三维模型，并使用不同类型的医学图像来建立模型，包括MRI扫描和X光。每种方法都有不同的优缺点，通过比较这三种方法，我们希望找到最好的方法来建立膝骨性关节炎的模型。

This project aims to find better ways to look at osteoarthritis by looking at the shape and appearance of the knee joint. The shape of the joint tells us a lot about its health; Osteoarthritis makes joints flattened and deformed, which causes pain when people put weight on them, but certain shapes may reflect early signs of osteoarthritis, or be a sign that someone is at risk of getting osteoarthritis in the future. However it is difficult to fully describe the shape of complicated structures, such as a knee joint using a few lengths, widths and angles. To build a computer model of the shape and appearance of the knee, we will use image analysis techniques used in other applications such as face recognition.Currently, the only effective treatment for osteoarthritis is joint replacement. There are no effective drugs available, other than for pain relief. Unfortunately, because osteoarthritis is a complicated disease that is hard to identify in its early stages and often progresses quite slowly from year to year, running drug trials is often considered too expensive and time consuming by pharmaceutical companies. We hope to find that the shape and appearance of the knee can be used to measure smaller changes in disease severity than currently possible and whether it could be used to identify a ?high-risk? group of patients, so that drug trials would become more economical to run.We will compare two and three dimensional models of the knee and use different types of medical image to build the model, including MRI scans and x-rays. Each method has different advantages and disadvantages so by comparing all three we hope to find the best way to model the osteoarthritic knee.