Preserved patellar cartilage at the expense of anterior femoral cartilage damage in Hip Osteoarthritis: An Inter-Limb Inter-Joint qMRI analysis

It is well documented that osteoarthritis often affects multiple joints in patients with the disease. However, direct associations between limbs and across the joints of the lower extremity remains understudied. With bilateral hip and knee MRI of 18 patients, this study utilizes automated segmentation and VBR-atlas-based methods to explore the associations between twelve femoral and acetabular sub-compartments with trochlear and patellar cartilage T1rho, T2 values. Significant negative correlations between the patellar T2 and anterior hip femoral T1rho and T2 values, suggest a probable ongoing gait dysfunction. The data-distribution indicates possibility of a subgroup of patients having different progression and compensatory trajectories, to be explored further with gait pattern analysis.