Near-infrared spectroscopy enables quantitative evaluation of human cartilage biomechanical properties during arthroscopy

Abstract

To investigate the feasibility of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy (NIRS) for evaluation of human articular cartilage biomechanical properties during arthroscopy. A novel arthroscopic NIRS probe designed in our research group was utilized by an experienced orthopedic surgeon to measure NIR spectra from articular cartilage of human cadaver knee joints (ex vivo, n=18) at several measurement locations during an arthroscopic surgery. Osteochondral samples (n=265) were extracted from the measurement sites for reference analysis. NIR spectra were remeasured in a controlled laboratory environment (invitro), after which the corresponding cartilage thickness and biomechanical properties were determined. Hybrid multivariate regression models based on principal component analysis and linear mixed effects modeling (PCA-LME) were utilized to relate cartilage invitro spectra and biomechanical properties, as well as to account for the spatial dependency. Additionally, a k-nearest neighbors (kNN) classifier was employed to reject outlying exvivo NIR spectra resulting from a non-optimal probe-cartilage contact. Model performance was evaluated for both invitro and exvivo NIR spectra via Spearman's rank correlation (ρ) and the ratio of performance to interquartile range (RPIQ). Regression models accurately predicted cartilage thickness and biomechanical properties from invitro NIR spectra (Model: 0.77 ≤ ρ≤0.87, 2.03≤RPIQ ≤ 3.0; Validation: 0.74 ≤ ρ≤0.84, 1.87≤RPIQ ≤2.90). When predicting cartilage properties from exvivo NIR spectra (0.33 ≤ ρ≤0.57 and 1.02≤RPIQ ≤2.14), a kNN classifier enhanced the accuracy of predictions (0.52 ≤ ρ ≤ 0.87 and 1.06 ≤ RPIQ ≤ 1.88). Arthroscopic NIRS could substantially enhance identification of damaged cartilage by enabling quantitative evaluation of cartilage biomechanical properties. The results demonstrate the capacity of NIRS in clinical applications.