title: MR atlas for articular cartilage morphology: potential to detect shape differences.
abstract: An atlas of the cartilage was created using free form transformation of MR images of the cartilage from 20 subjects. The deformation required to move each voxel to its corresponding location in the atlas is used to determine the differences in shape between cartilages of subjects in a population. Based on these active shape models, it is possible to localize regions of high morphological variance in population cohorts. The atlas, reported here, is based on 20 male subjects; ten symptomatic of arthritis and ten asymptomatic. The active shape models based on this atlas show regions of high morphological variance corresponding to cartilage thinning in the arthritic group. This method has the potential to differentiate between normal and arthritic population groups by detecting subtle morphological changes in articular cartilage.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Medical Imaging Infomatics Group, University of California, Los Angeles 90024, United States. htameem@mii.ucla.edu
authors.forename: Hussain Z
authors.initials: HZ
authors.lastname: Tameem
authors.forename: Usha S
authors.initials: US
authors.lastname: Sinha
mesh_terms: D002358:Cartilage, Articular / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008953:Models, Anatomic