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Assessment of knee pain from MR imaging using a convolutional Siamese network

  • Imaging Informatics and Artificial Intelligence
  • Published:
European Radiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 22 July 2020

This article has been updated

Abstract

Objectives

It remains difficult to characterize the source of pain in knee joints either using radiographs or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We sought to determine if advanced machine learning methods such as deep neural networks could distinguish knees with pain from those without it and identify the structural features that are associated with knee pain.

Methods

We constructed a convolutional Siamese network to associate MRI scans obtained on subjects from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) with frequent unilateral knee pain comparing the knee with frequent pain to the contralateral knee without pain. The Siamese network architecture enabled pairwise learning of information from two-dimensional (2D) sagittal intermediate-weighted turbo spin echo slices obtained from similar locations on both knees. Class activation mapping (CAM) was utilized to create saliency maps, which highlighted the regions most associated with knee pain. The MRI scans and the CAMs of each subject were reviewed by an expert radiologist to identify the presence of abnormalities within the model-predicted regions of high association.

Results

Using 10-fold cross-validation, our model achieved an area under curve (AUC) value of 0.808. When individuals whose knee WOMAC pain scores were not discordant were excluded, model performance increased to 0.853. The radiologist review revealed that about 86% of the cases that were predicted correctly had effusion-synovitis within the regions that were most associated with pain.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates a proof of principle that deep learning can be applied to assess knee pain from MRI scans.

Key Points

• Our article is the first to leverage a deep learning framework to associate MR images of the knee with knee pain.

• We developed a convolutional Siamese network that had the ability to fuse information from multiple two-dimensional (2D) MRI slices from the knee with pain and the contralateral knee of the same individual without pain to predict unilateral knee pain.

• Our model achieved an area under curve (AUC) value of 0.808. When individuals who had WOMAC pain scores that were not discordant for knees (pain discordance < 3) were excluded, model performance increased to 0.853.

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Change history

  • 22 July 2020

    The original version of this article, published on 13 February 2020, unfortunately contained a mistake.

Abbreviations

AUC:

Area under curve

BMI:

Body mass index

BML:

Bone marrow lesion

CAM:

Class activation mapping

CNN:

Convolutional neural network

GPU:

Graphical processing unit

KL:

Kellgren-Lawrence

ML:

Machine learning

MOAKS:

MRI Osteoarthritis Knee Score

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

OA:

Osteoarthritis

OAI:

Osteoarthritis initiative

ROC:

Receiver operating characteristic

WOMAC:

Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index

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Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through BU-CTSI Grant (1UL1TR001430), a Scientist Development Grant (17SDG33670323) from the American Heart Association, and a Research Award from the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering and Digital Health Initiative at Boston University, and NIH grants to VBK, DTF, and TDC (5U01AG-018820 and 1R01AR070139 and supported by the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre).

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vijaya B. Kolachalama.

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Guarantor

The scientific guarantor of this publication is Dr. David Felson (dfelson@bu.edu).

Conflict of interest

Ali Guermazi is shareholder of BICL and consultant to Pfizer, AstraZeneca, TissueGene, Roche, Galapagos, and MerckSerono.

Statistics and biometry

No complex statistical methods were necessary for this paper. Additionally, Dr. Kolachalama has needed statistical expertise.

Informed consent

Written informed consent was not required for this study because de-identified data is publicly available (Osteoarthritis Initiative: https://oai.nih.gov). At the time of enrollment, informed consent and ethical committee approvals were obtained by the OAI investigators.

Ethical approval

Institutional Review Board approval was not required because the data was obtained from a public database (Osteoarthritis Initiative: https://oai.nih.gov).

Study subjects or cohorts overlap

The cohort has been reported in https://oai.nih.gov.

Methodology

• This is a case-control study.

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Chang, G.H., Felson, D.T., Qiu, S. et al. Assessment of knee pain from MR imaging using a convolutional Siamese network. Eur Radiol 30, 3538–3548 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-020-06658-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-020-06658-3

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