title: Progression analysis and stage discovery in continuous physiological processes using image computing.
abstract: We propose an image computing-based method for quantitative analysis of continuous physiological processes that can be sensed by medical imaging and demonstrate its application to the analysis of morphological alterations of the bone structure, which correlate with the progression of osteoarthritis (OA). The purpose of the analysis is to quantitatively estimate OA progression in a fashion that can assist in understanding the pathophysiology of the disease. Ultimately, the texture analysis will be able to provide an alternative OA scoring method, which can potentially reflect the progression of the disease in a more direct fashion compared to the existing clinically utilized classification schemes based on radiology. This method can be useful not just for studying the nature of OA, but also for developing and testing the effect of drugs and treatments. While in this paper we demonstrate the application of the method to osteoarthritis, its generality makes it suitable for the analysis of other progressive clinical conditions that can be diagnosed and prognosed by using medical imaging.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Genetics, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 251 Bayview Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
authors.forename: Lior
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shamir
authors.forename: Salim
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rahimi
authors.forename: Nikita
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Orlov
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ferrucci
authors.forename: Ilya G
authors.initials: IG
authors.lastname: Goldberg