Quantification and 3D Visualization of Articular Cartilage of Knee Joint Using Image Processing Techniques

The articular cartilage of knee joint plays an important role in smooth movement and lubrication of the joint. Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative disease of the knee joint, commonly affecting the elderly around the world. Visualization and morphological analysis of cartilage plays an important role in the assessment of OA and rehabilitate the affected people. In the present work, thickness and volume of the cartilage was quantified using an edge detection based interactive segmentation method from knee joint magnetic resonance images (MRI) and the joint is visualized in 3D. Volume of interest (VOI) processing approach was used to reduce the number of voxels processed in 3D rendering of articular cartilage. The method reduces the processing time in comparison with manual and other semiautomatic methods. The agreement of thickness and volume measurements was assessed using Bland-Altman plots in comparison with manual method.