Monitoring the progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA) in a clinical setting has proven to be challenging with current methods of detecting changes in the joint demonstrating poor sensitivity to biomarkers associated with joint degeneration. Other methods of detecting disease progression like MRI, are much more expensive and not readily available in a clinical setting. The development of low dose weight-bearing CT (WBCT) scans holds potential to overcome some of these problems through 3D joint space width (JSW) measurement.

The goal of this study was to assess the sensitivity of 3D JSW measurements using WBCT to detect changes in the joint associated with the development of OA. The existing JSW measurement process was improved upon and compared to current clinical methods of monitoring OA in the knee.

The 3D JSW measurement method compared favorably with present clinical metrics. The responsiveness to changes in the knee joint was much better than current methods of analysis used in a clinical setting. It also improved upon subjective methods currently used by clinicians to classify the state of OA.

3D JSW is a metric that shows promise in analyzing knee joints for the progression of OA. Speeding up 3D JSW measurement could greatly influence the ability to measure the effectiveness of treatments used to prevent the progression of OA.