Choice of knee cartilage thickness change metric for different treatment goals in efficacy studies.

Introduction: In knee osteoarthritis, local increase and decrease in cartilage thickness has been observed over short time intervals. Hence, averaging cartilage change across large regions may not capture the complexity of structural alterations in disease progression. This study aims to examine the relative performance of different metrics of cartilage thickness change for different clinical studies scenarios.

Radiologic markers of osteoarthritis progression.

Purpose Of Review: To review radiographic and MRI developments in measuring osteoarthritis progression in the tibiofemoral compartment of the knee.

Recent Findings: Standardized techniques for measuring joint space width in the medial tibiofemoral compartment, using standardized radiographic protocols, have become accepted for quantifying changes in tibiofemoral in knee osteoarthritis. In addition, there is a significant body of supporting data on the longitudinal change in MRI-derived cartilage morphology (thickness, volume) as an end point to reflect osteoarthritis progression/cartilage loss.