Evaluation of an automated laminar cartilage T2 relaxation time analysis method in an early osteoarthritis model.
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Abstract
A fully automated laminar cartilage composition (MRI-based T2) analysis method was technically and clinically validated by comparing radiographically normal knees with (CL-JSN) and without contra-lateral joint space narrowing or other signs of radiographic osteoarthritis (OA, CL-noROA).2D U-Nets were trained from manually segmented femorotibial cartilages (nβ=β72) from all 7 echoes (AllE), or from the 1st echo only (1stE) of multi-echo-spin-echo (MESE) MRIs acquired by the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI). Because of its greater accuracy, only the AllE U-Net was then applied to knees from the OAI healthy reference cohort (nβ=β10), CL-JSN (nβ=β39), and (1:1) matched CL-noROA knees (nβ=β39) that all had manual expert segmentation, and to 982 non-matched CL-noROA knees without expert segmentation.The agreement (Dice similarity coefficient) between automated vs. manual expert cartilage segmentation was between 0.82βΒ±β0.05/0.79βΒ±β0.06 (AllE/1stE) and 0.88βΒ±β0.03/0.88βΒ±β0.03 (AllE/1stE) across femorotibial cartilage plates. The deviation between automated vs. manually derived laminar T2 reached up toβ-β2.2βΒ±β2.6Β ms/β+β4.1βΒ±β10.2Β ms (AllE/1stE). The AllE U-Net showed a similar sensitivity to cross-sectional laminar T2 differences between CL-JSN and CL-noROA knees in the matched (Cohen’s Dββ€β0.54) and the non-matched (Dββ€β0.54) comparison as the matched manual analyses (Dββ€β0.48). Longitudinally, the AllE U-Net also showed a similar sensitivity to CL-JSN vs. CS-noROA differences in the matched (Dββ€β0.51) and the non-matched (Dββ€β0.43) comparison as matched manual analyses (Dββ€β0.41).The fully automated T2 analysis showed a high agreement, acceptable accuracy, and similar sensitivity to cross-sectional and longitudinal laminar T2 differences in an early OA model, compared with manual expert analysis.Clinicaltrials.gov identification: NCT00080171.Β© 2024. The Author(s).