Functional dynamics of the knee joint by ultrafast, cine-CT

An ultrafast, cine-CT scanner was used to demonstrate the differential mobility of the lateral and medial femoral condyles on their respective tibial plateaus in cadaver knees and to show the kinematic type of motion of the knee joint. Current imaging techniques cannot accomplish this because they do not perform combined quantitative, tomographic, and dynamic studies. Accordingly, this preliminary report presents the data from cine-CT scans of 12 normal intact adult cadaver knees. Scans were obtained at the rate of 14 or 17 per second at 50 or 100 ms exposures through midsagittal planes of the medial and lateral condyles and intercondylar notch. The cine-CT scans were displayed on a CRT and analyzed as closed-loop movies and as isolated images. Each cadaver femoral condyle demonstrated a different combined rolling and gliding motion. Preliminary results on the cadaver knee suggest the lateral femoral condyle moved 2.3 times further on the tibial plateau than its medial counterpart. The percentage of rolling for the lateral condyle was 43%-49%; the percentage of gliding was 51%-57%, with a ratio of rolling to gliding of 1:1.2. The percentage of rolling for the medial condyle was 16%-26%; the percentage of gliding 74%-84% with a ratio of rolling to gliding of 1:3.8. The femoral condyles, tibia, and cruciate ligaments acted as a crossed four-bar linkage in concordance with kinematic theory. The applicability of the cadaver knee results to patient dynamics and diagnosis cannot be determined from this study and awaits further investigations on the in vivo knee. However, ultrafast cine-CT demonstrated the complex knee motion in the cadaver knee joint.