Abstract
The accessibility of quantitative measurements of joint morphometry depends on appropriate tibial alignment and volume of interest (VOI) selection of joint compartments; often a challenging and time-consuming manual task. In this work, we developed a novel automatic, efficient, and model-invariant image preprocessing pipeline that allows for highly reproducible 3D quantitative morphometric analysis (QMA) of the joint. The pipeline addresses the problem by deploying two modules: an alignment module and a subdivision module. Alignment is achieved by representing the tibia in its basic form using lower degree spherical harmonic basis functions and aligning using principal component analysis. The second module subdivides the joint into lateral and medial VOIs via a watershedding approach based on persistence homology. Multiple repeated micro-computed tomography scans of small (rat) and medium (rabbit) animal knees were processed using the pipeline to demonstrate model invariance. Existing QMA was performed to evaluate the pipeline’s ability to generate reproducible measurements. Intraclass correlation coefficient and mean-normalised root-mean-squared error of more than 0.75 and lower than 9.5%, respectively, were achieved for joint centre of mass, joint contact area under virtual loading, joint space width, and joint space volume. Processing time and technical requirements were reduced compared to manual processing in previous studies.
Highlights
The accessibility of quantitative measurements of joint morphometry depends on appropriate tibial alignment and volume of interest (VOI) selection of joint compartments; often a challenging and time-consuming manual task
In the context of quantitative analysis of musculoskeletal tissues, many morphometric measures have been developed for computed tomography (CT)[3,4,5,6] and magnetic resonance (MR)[7,8,9,10] images to evaluate tissue and structural changes of the bone and cartilage
Recent s tudies[11,12] have proposed a suite of 17 quantitative morphometric analysis measures (QMA) describing structures of the joint to assess it as a single organ and have demonstrated its reproducibility and sensitivity in assessing joint health in preclinical small and medium animal models using ex vivo micro-computed tomography datasets of intact rat and rabbit knee joints
Summary
The accessibility of quantitative measurements of joint morphometry depends on appropriate tibial alignment and volume of interest (VOI) selection of joint compartments; often a challenging and time-consuming manual task. The manual nature of the initial alignment process, as well as the selection of the medial and lateral joint VOI has meant the quality of the joint QMA measurements is highly dependent on the skills and training of the operators to achieve high reproducibility and disease discriminating quality. Settings for image processing operations such as dilation, erosion, closing, opening, and others, in the workflow must be manually adjusted to achieve a reliable result This is a non-trivial task that prohibits the use of a simple adaptation between models[19], and is a time-consuming process that can occupy skilled operators for several weeks per study and present significant challenges to the robust application of joint QMA measurements in studies involving larger volumes of data and new joint models
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