Radiographic assessment of rheumatoid arthritis

In this article, the rationale for the use of radiographs in the assessment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis is presented, along with a discussion of the choice of radiographs to be used. The author's choices for the scoring methods best used for minimal, intermediate, and more comprehensive databases for use in clinical research, other available scoring methods, factors influencing the type of database to be employed, and prior applications of scoring methods are also discussed.