AUTOMATIC DETECTION OF CARTILAGE THICKNESS FOR EARLY DETECTION OF KOA

ABSTRACT Knee Osteoarthritis is a common joint disorder that is most prevalent in the knee joint. Knee osteoarthritis (OA) can be characterized by the gradual loss of articular cartilage (AC). Articular Cartilage is a hard but greasy coating on the end of each bone which forms the joint. Cartilage seizes up and erodes away in OA. In this work, image processing techniques are applied on magnetic resonance images (MRI) of knee, the Adaptive histogram equalization, Contrast enhanced image process, Gaussian Filter, Ostu Thresholding Algorithm, Edge Detection Technique, Automatic Region Detection Method, Euclidean and connected component algorithm are adopted in this work. Quantification of cartilage thickness is carried out for normal and OA cases. The results are useful in the study of measurement of articular cartilage for OA and for therapeutic decisions