What are the longitudinal changes in subchondral bone thickness after ACL injury?

Project Description

What are the longitudinal changes in subchondral bone thickness after ACL injury?

In our SALTACII study we have been following a cohort of young adults who sustained an acute knee injury involving a tear to their anterior cruciate ligament. We are now approaching the 6-year time point of the study and have an assortment of image (and other) data that has been tracking their knee health.

We know that in post-traumatic injury of the knee often leads to knee osteoarthritis development, even if reconstruction surgery is performed. The etiology seems to eventually lead to a thickening of the subchondral bone plate, but this is typically shown in animal models, not humans.

The goal of this project would be to use the HR-pQCT and/or the DECT images of the knees of this cohort from annual visits since their original injury to measure the local subchondral bone thickness:

https://github.com/Bonelab/Bonelab/blob/master/bonelab/cli/treece_thickness.py

We have imaging for the injured knee as well as the contralateral knee, which can serve as a control. Given the long follow-up of this cohort there is a good chance we will begin to see early changes to the subchondral bone thickness.

Scope

• MSc project
• Summer student

Data Source

• SALTACII

Resources

• Python scripts
• Bonelab GitHub repository
• Ogo GitHub repository