The paediatric knee: A medical imaging assessment analysis

Abstract

IntroductionIn recent years, there has been an increase in sport‐related injuries in the paediatric population. Improved imaging of musculoskeletal structures has also raised the need to better understand the changing morphology of the musculoskeletal structures during infant and child development. This study therefore aimed to investigate the morphology of bony elements of the paediatric knee at different ages from medical imaging data.MethodsErect knee CT (n=60) and MRI (n=72) DICOM images were obtained for 132 paediatric patients between 2–15 years (mean, 11.35 ±3.18) of age. The morphometry of nine parameters including notch width (NW), bicondylar width (BW), notch width index (NWI), tibial eminence height (TEH) and width (TEW), and femoral and tibial growth plate height (GPH) and width (GPW) were analysed and correlated with age and sex.ResultsIn summary, the mean±SD for each parameter was: NW, 9.55 ±2.6; BW, 69.63 ±8.56; NWI, 0.14 ±0.03; TEH, 8.53 ±1.73; TEW, 27.52 ±4.12; FGPH, 1.25 ±0.71; and TGPH, 1.21 ±0.72. NW, BW, NWI, TEH and TEW had a significant positive linear correlation with age. NW, NWI and TEH had strong positive linear correlations with all variables except tibial slope, and femoral and tibial GPH. Femoral and tibial GPH correlated well with each other.ConclusionsApplied anatomical knowledge of paediatric knee to clinical practice can possibly improve diagnosis and patient management, and assist in predicting injury patterns. Further longitudinal studies will assist in accurately mapping growth of each knee structure with age.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.