Semin Musculoskelet Radiol 2004; 08: 301-311 DOI: 10.1055/s-2004-861577
Copyright © 2004 by Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc., 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001 USA.
Quantification of Bone Lesions in Rheumatoid Arthritis by MRI Multispectral Tissue Class Transition Analysis
Richard A.D Carano1, John A. Lynch2
1 Department of Physiology, Genentech, Inc. South San Francisco, California 2 Osteoporosis and Arthritis Research Group, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, Department of Radiology, San Francisco, California

ABSTRACT

Recent advances in the development of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) bring hope for a treatment that will provide inhibition of the structural damage associated with the disease. DMARD development presents great challenges for the validation of structural surrogate markers to evaluate the performance of these new therapies in clinical trials, where they will likely be compared with active controls. These challenges are being addressed in part by the medical imaging community by developing quantitative measures of RA disease progression for evaluation of new treatments during clinical trials. Recently, a novel multispectral (MS) MRI analysis method was presented to quantify temporal changes in bone lesions observed in the hands of RA patients. This technique employs image registration and MS analysis to identify MS tissue class transitions between serial MRI exams. This review will examine the use of MS class transition analysis as a means to quantify changes in bone lesions in the hands and wrists of patients with RA.

KEYWORDS

Rheumatoid arthritis - magnetic resonance imaging - multispectral analysis - image registration - bone erosion