Integrity analysis of knee joint by acoustic emission technique

Abstract

Integrity analysis of knee joint involves a detail study of several anatomical parts of knee such as bones, cartilage, tendons etc. Any damage of these anatomical parts causes several knee diseases. The incidence of knee osteoarthritis (OA), a widely manifestative knee disease, particularly in aging society, increases with getting ages or due to some damages in the cartilage of knee joint. The major concern of the disease of OA is its incurability at its matured stages. However, early detection and appropriate medication can reduce the risk of this disease. As the acoustic emission (AE) technique has been using in damage evaluation of materials in non-destructive testing for years, the signal processing of AE technique has been applied for evaluating the disorderness of knee joint as well. Particularly, the present investigation focuses on the dynamical behavioral characterization of knee joint for its integrity analysis with several AE non-destructive imaging conditions. AE signals have been collected from different positions of tibia, patella, femur etc. for getting sufficient information about the condition of cartilage of knee joint. Data has been collected for participants with different ages and compared with the incident conditions of AE signals for the detail analysis of OA, a vital knee disease of aged people all over the world.