Statistical parametric mapping for in vivo MRI assessment of morphological changes in rat articular cartilage

摘要

This paper explores the use of statistical parametric mapping, which has been widely used in brain imaging applications, in the assessment of morphological changes in rat articular cartilage during OA. This approach can not only detect but also localize changes, effectively zooming in statistically more informative areas and therefore maximizing the sensitivity. The analysis of in-vivo MR images of rat articular cartilage demonstrates that the new approach is at least as sensitive as the cartilage volume analysis.