Knee osteoarthritis image registration: Data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative

Knee osteoarthritis is a very common disease, in early stages, changes in joint structures are shown, some of the most common symptoms are; formation of osteophytes, cartilage degradation and joint space reduction, among others. Based on a joint space reduction measurement, Kellgren-Lawrence grading scale (K&L), is a very extensive used tool to asses radiological OA knee x-ray images, based on information obtained from these assessments, the objective of this work is to correlate the K&L score to the bilateral asymmetry between knees. Using public data from the Osteoarthritis initiative (OAI), a set of images with different K&L scores were used to determine a relationship of K&L score and the bilateral asymmetry, in order to measure the asymmetry between the knees, the right knee was registered to match the left knee, then a series of similarity metrics, mutual information, correlation, and mean squared error where computed to correlate the deformation (mismatch) of the knees to the K&L score. Radiological information was evaluated and scored by OAI radiologist groups. The results of the study suggest an association between Radiological K&L score and image registration metrics, mutual information and correlation is higher in the early stages, and mean squared error is higher in advanced stages. This association can be helpful to develop a computer aided grading tool.