Abstract
BACKGROUND: The clinical use of minimum joint space width (mJSW) and cartilage volume and thickness has been limited to the longitudinal measurement of disease progression (i.e. change over time) rather than the diagnosis of OA in which values are compared to a standard. This is primarily due to lack of establishment of normative values of joint space width and cartilage morphometry as has been done with bone density values in diagnosing osteoporosis. Thus, the purpose of this pilot study is to estimate reference values of medial joint space width and cartilage morphometry in healthy individuals of all ages using standard radiography and peripheral magnetic resonance imaging. DESIGN: For this cross-sectional study, healthy volunteers underwent a fixed-flexion knee X-ray and a peripheral MR (pMR) scan of the same knee using a 1T machine (ONI OrthOne, Wilmington, MA). Radiographs were digitized and analyzed for medial mJSW using an automated algorithm. Only knees scoring 0.05) in either sex. Females had a mean (SD) medial mJSW of 4.8 (0.7) mm compared to males with corresponding larger value of 5.7 (0.8) mm. Cartilage morphometry results showed similar trends with mean (SD) tibial cartilage volume and thickness in females of 1.50 (0.19) microL/mm2 and 1.45 (0.19) mm, respectively, and 1.77 (0.24) microL/mm2 and 1.71 (0.24) mm, respectively, in males. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that medial mJSW values do not decrease with aging in healthy individuals but remain fairly constant throughout the lifespan with "healthy" values of 4.8 mm for females and 5.7 mm for males. Similar trends were seen for cartilage morphology. Results suggest there may be no need to differentiate a t-score and a z-score in OA diagnosis because cartilage thickness and JSW remain constant throughout life in the absence of OA.