Imaging in knee osteoarthritis.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent and disabling disease still necessitating research in pathogenic mechanisms, predictors of disease progression and responsive techniques to detect the slow structural changes within a short time frame. In this scenario, imaging modalities are essential. With recent advancements in technology and availability of large longitudinal datasets, tremendous advances are occurring. The present review discusses and summarizes recent original publications in this area.

RECENT FINDINGS: MRI has been the most popular modality used to evaluate the different roles of structural disorders in incident knee osteoarthritis, to compare predictability of individual features of semiquantitative scores for knee replacement and to formulate different disease progression models. More ultrasound studies have been published, including the proposed semiquantitative scoring system by the Outcome Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trial group.

SUMMARY: As more advanced emerging technologies are developed in imaging, there are great opportunities to formulate new incident and prediction osteoarthritis models and to discover tissue-targeted disease-modifying drugs.