PC Analysis of MR images of Human Knee Joints to Measure Femoral Cartilage Thickness

The thickness of articular ligament can be a vital parameter to evaluate the movement of osteoarthritis. Magnetic Resonance imaging (MRI) can straightforwardly envision ligament, so far subjective estimation and poor reproducibility have been significant issues in the quantitative estimation of ligament thickness. The capacity of MR difference to picture ligament, and a target evaluation utilizing a mechanized edge discovery system have now been consolidated together to give a completely programmed estimation of femoral ligament thickness for the human knee joint.


INTRODUCTION
Estimation of joint space (JS) utilizing X-radiology is thought to be an essential measure for clinical evaluation of movement of osteoarthritis 1 .X-radiology just permits observing of between bone division (or JS), though MRI has been turned out to be the main non-intrusive methodology that permits coordinate representation of ligament 2 .Attractive Resonance Imaging (MRI) has now been utilized for quantitative assessment of ligament 3 .Quantitative estimation of JS narrowing utilizing X-beam, and estimation of ligament thickness by MRI, have been expert in the past either by manual strategies or scoring frameworks 4 .Both those endure the double burden of being subjective and tedious; besides, the between and intra-eyewitness fluctuation of the estimation prompts poor reproducibility of the outcomes.As of late it has been demonstrated that the computerized investigation of MR pictures of human finger joints seems to offer a more helpful and target way to deal with estimation of ligament thickness 5 .The present work shows mechanized estimation of femoral ligament utilizing a comparative, completely electronic examination of MR pictures of human knee joint.

METHODS
Every one of the estimations were made utilizing a 2 T GE Magnet with 100.5 cm bore at 125 MHz worked by a GE SPECT2500 PC with GE imaging programming.2D sagittal cuts were obtained utilizing GRASS (100.5/8.5/500)succession.
The two imperative devices utilized for the robotization of the estimation system are edge location and format coordinating.Edge identification is finished by recursive separating in light of Canny's criteria utilizing d(x) = ßxe -ß|x| as a differential administrator and a(x) = (1+ß|xe | -ß|x| ) as an obscuring capacity 6 .Format coordinating depends on two dimensional cross relationship 7 utilizing a multi-determination strategy.Figure 1 demonstrates the succession which prompts a completely computerized examination of femoral ligament thickness for the human knee joint.The PC needs to recognize the position of the femoral bone in the 2D MR picture (a).The coarse edge discovery (b) is done to portray the noticeable highlights of the picture.Keeping in mind the end goal to find the femur, that edge delineate cross related with the standard layout ( e ) of human femur issue that remains to be worked out the relationship esteem (d), which empowers the PC to build up the co-ordinates of the inexact focal point of the femur.The picture is then zoomed to characterize the region of intrigue ( e ) and an edge outline acquired with a better channel to portray exactly the edges of the ligament around the femur (f).The following errand is to take out the relic edges from the trabecular structure, by producing a cover (g) around the ligament, utilizing the best fitted edge decided in the past stride, trailed by straightforward concealing of the.pictures (g) and (f') to characterize the ligament edges (h).The thickness, characterized as the opposite separation between the ligament edges, is measured along the ordinary bearing to the femoral form (I) at each point and the plot of ligament Thickness in mm is plotted against the separation along the femur.

RESULTS
The computerized yield (Figure 2) which demonstrates the different stages and the plot of the ligament thickness around the femoral form in mm, is delivered as a Post Script document likewise demonstrating the mean and standard deviation of the ligament thickness.The strategy has been tried on subjects of various age and sex.A similar technique has been adjusted for ligament thickness estimation of the patella.Table 1 gives the mean and standard deviation estimations of femoral ligament thickness for a few volunteers, created by this mechanized investigation   of the knee joint, the real segment of the femoral ligament can be visualised separetely in a sagttal section.however, it is hard to delinate the distal edge of the femoral ligament where it is either covered by, or is in eye to eye contact with the ligament or the tibia, hence an altered variant of the product has been created to compute the mean standard deviation of the ligament at a particular piece of femur.The outcomes for solid volunteers of a tight age scope of 21 to 30 years have empowered dynamic degeneration of infected ligament.

Fig. 1 .
Fig.1.(a) MR picture of a Human Knee Joint[9] (b) coarse edge discovery (c) fine edge identification (d) veil era (e)and(f) Thickness estimation of sagital and coronal plane