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Recent advances in osteoarthritis imaging—the Osteoarthritis Initiative

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disorder. The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) is a multicentre, longitudinal, prospective observational cohort study of knee OA that aims to provide publicly accessible clinical datasets, images and biospecimens, to enable researchers to investigate factors that influence the onset and development of OA, and evaluate biomarkers that predict and track the course of the disease. In this Perspectives, we describe the rationale and design of the OAI and its cohort, discuss imaging protocols and summarize image analyses completed to date. We include descriptive analyses of publicly available longitudinal (2-year) data of changes in cartilage thickness in a core sample of 600 knees from 590 participants in the OAI progression subcohort. Furthermore, we describe published methodological and applied imaging research that has emerged from OAI pilot studies and OAI data releases, and how these studies might contribute to clinical development of biomarkers for assessing the efficacy of intervention trials.

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Figure 1: 3D rendering of the knee cartilage, meniscus, and thigh muscles in an OAI participant, from MRI data.
Figure 2: Sample images generated using the OAI knee imaging protocol.
Figure 3: Sample images generated using the OAI thigh imaging protocol.
Figure 4: Regions and subregions of the knee that are frequently used to track changes in cartilage thickness.
Figure 5: Longitudinal (1-year) loss of cartilage in different regions of the knee (MRI data) and of medial radiographic JSW.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) investigators, clinical staff and participants at each of the clinical centres and at the coordinating centre for their important contributions in acquiring the publicly available clinical and imaging data. The OAI is a public–private partnership comprising five contracts (N01-AR-2-2258; N01-AR-2-2259; N01-AR-2-2260; N01-AR-2-2261; N01-AR-2-2262) funded by the NIH, and conducted by the OAI Study Investigators. Private funding partners of the OAI include Merck Research Laboratories, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer. Private sector funding for the OAI is managed by the Foundation for the NIH.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

F. Eckstein, W. Wirth and M. C. Nevitt made substantial contributions to researching data for the article, discussions of content, and review/editing of the manuscript before submission, and F. Eckstein and M. C. Nevitt wrote the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Felix Eckstein.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

F. Eckstein declares that he is co-owner and CEO of Chondrometrics GmbH, a company that licenses software to academic researchers and provides image analysis service for academic researchers and the pharmaceutical industry. He provides consulting services to MerckSerono, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, Perceptive, Bioclinica, and Abbot, and has received speaker honoraria from Genzyme, Merck, Synthes, and Medtronic. He has received research funding from Pfizer, Eli Lilly, MerckSerono, GlaxoSmithKline, Centocor, Wyeth, Novartis, and Stryker.

Wolfgang Wirth declares that he has a part-time appointment with Chondrometrics GmbH and has provided consulting services to MerckSerono.

M. C. Nevitt declares no competing interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Monthly quality assurance process, and test-retest reliability studies of Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) pilot imaging data (cartilage segmentation) (DOC 51 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

Methodological studies conducted using Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) imaging data (DOC 57 kb)

Supplementary Table 3

Studies using subregional or atlas-based analysis of articular cartilage in the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) (DOC 32 kb)

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Eckstein, F., Wirth, W. & Nevitt, M. Recent advances in osteoarthritis imaging—the Osteoarthritis Initiative. Nat Rev Rheumatol 8, 622–630 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2012.113

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