Automatic measurement and visualization of focal femoral cartilage thickness in stress-based regions of interest using three-dimensional knee models.

Purpose: Thinning of cartilage is a common manifestation of osteoarthritis. This study addresses the need of measuring the focal femoral cartilage thickness at the weight- bearing regions of the knee by developing a reproducible and automatic method from MR images.

Methods: 3D models derived from semiautomatic MR image segmentations were used in this study.