Measurement of cartilage thickness for early detection of knee osteoarthritis (KOA)

Osteoarthritis (OA) is commonly seen among older populace and it is the most widespread of arthritic type. It is a degenerative joint disease where cartilage slowly wears away. Cartilage that covers the bone ensures the smooth movements of the joints. In knee OA, affected bones slide together due to degradation of cartilage, causing swell, pain and eventual loss of motion. Due to stress, knee joints can be frequently injured and damaged. The early detection of KOA could aware people to retard the progression of the ailment. Motivated by this, the paper presents an automatic method to quantify the thickness of cartilage in tibia femoral joint of knee. The estimation of thickness of articular cartilage of knee plays an important role in determining OA level. The research adopted various image processing techniques on 2D Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) of knee. Cartilage thickness is measured and compared with the standard cartilage thickness given by research groups. KOA classification is done based on this data.