Abstract
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory joint disease often affecting the hands, which if untreated causes disability. Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) provides information about the underlying functional properties of biological tissue. To detect pathophysiological changes in inflamed RA joints, a good understanding of the baseline values for healthy subjects is first required. Finger joints from healthy subjects were imaged using a non-contact, multispectral, continuous wave DOT system, recovering physiological parameters of oxygen saturation, total haemoglobin, water concentration and scatter amplitude. Reconstructed values across the cohort demonstrated good consistency between finger joints from the same participant, with greater variation seen between subjects.
Highlights
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory, autoimmune disease of the joints
We concern ourselves here with assessing baseline variability in healthy participants, to help understand the consistency of recovered parameters and identify those that may prove potentially useful for classification in future studies including patients with arthritis
Images recovered for scattering amplitude and total haemoglobin from human hand joints of healthy participants demonstrate a consistent distribution, with central regions of lower scatter amplitude (SA) and tHb
Summary
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory, autoimmune disease of the joints. In humans it is frequently seen in the hands, and if untreated can cause disability. Light subsequently exiting the tissue is measured at multiple boundary locations, typically achieved using either optical fibres in contact with the surface of the tissue [7] or a highly sensitive, non-contact imaging device such as a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera [8] The latter non-contact approach allows greater flexibility in the shape of the imaged tissue and significantly shorter set up time. In afflicted joints of RA patients, a series of signalling pathways stimulate the infiltration of inflammatory cells into the synovium, causing an increased metabolic demand and a lower localised oxygenation (hypoxia) compared to healthy joints [15] To meet this increased metabolism, up-regulation of blood vessel formation occurs (synovial angiogenesis) [16]. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents the developed clinical prototype imaging system; Section 3 outlines the theory behind parameter recovery in finger joints; Section 4 displays typical results from healthy participants; Section 5 contains an analysis of the variation in images of healthy finger joints between subjects; and in Section 6 relevant conclusions and implications for future imaging of RA patients will be discussed
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