Quantitative imaging for early detection of osteoarthritis

The project supported by European Regional Development Fund is related to Quantitative Imaging for Early Detection of Osteoarthritis. The developed method has been tested on high resolution X-Ray images of knees at early stage when the pathological changes in patient's bones cannot be reliably quantified by using the standard radiologic tests. At early stage the pathology is latently developing and so being diagnosed later becomes untreatable. The proposed method has been developed in collaboration with Fusion Radiology (UK) and with Stavropol regional hospital (Russia). The Fusion Radiology (led by Mr Azizul Ambia) is a contractor of the NHS, providing radiology opinions for multiple UK hospitals. The regional hospital (the Deputy MD Anna Sadovaya) has verified the developed method on 160 patient cases. The new method has provided a statistically significant improvement of diagnostic accuracy on the anonymised patient records. The improvements were between 7% and 9%. The results achieved in the studies will allow radiologists to minimise false negative rate which is critically important for early diagnostics.