Osteoarthritis year in review 2023: Imaging

Area of Science:

• Orthopedics
• Radiology
• Biomedical Imaging

Background:

• Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease requiring advanced imaging for research and clinical trials.
• In vivo imaging plays a crucial role in understanding OA progression and evaluating treatment efficacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide a narrative review of original research in in vivo osteoarthritis imaging.
• To cover the period from January 1, 2022, to April 1, 2023.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a PubMed search using terms related to OA imaging, including MRI, X-ray, CT, AI, deep learning, and machine learning.
• Focused on in vivo human studies, excluding ex vivo and animal research.
• Organized findings by anatomical structure, imaging modality, AI applications, clinical trial challenges, and biomarkers.

Main Results:

• Identified 249 relevant publications on in vivo human OA imaging.
• The knee joint (61%) and MRI (42%) were the most studied anatomical area and modality.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) use is increasing, but limited generalizability hinders widespread application.
• No pharmacologic clinical trials published during this period utilized imaging data as outcome measures.

Conclusions:

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly central to osteoarthritis (OA) imaging research.
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) remains the primary modality for OA assessment, with expanding roles in outcome prediction and classification.