Year in Review 2014: Imaging
Frank W Roemer
Imaging research in osteoarthritis since the last OARSI conference was characterized by a strong focus on MRI-based studies dealing with epidemiologic and methodologic aspects of the disease. Bone parameters that were evaluated using varying technology, are increasingly coming into the focus of the imaging community and a persistent interest in inflammatory disease manifestations has also been noted. Ultrastructural tissue assessment specifically of cartilage and meniscus using compositional MRI is evolving further and multiple studies were published using either large existing datasets or applying proof-of-concept approaches. The predictive value of these techniques in regard to structural and clinical outcomes will need to be an important research topic of the coming years.
Additional subsets of the large publicly available OAI MRI dataset are being analyzed at present and have been published with muscle analyses coming increasingly into the focus of the community.
Other modalities than MRI have been less explored. To date most imaging research is still performed on the knee joint although there has also been a continued interest in spine, hip and hand OA since the last OARSI meeting.