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Validation of Fully Automatic Quantitative Software for Finger Joint Space Narrowing Progression for Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

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Abstract

In rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the radiographic progression of joint space narrowing (JSN) is evaluated using visual assessments. However, those methods are complicated and time-consuming. We developed an automatic system that can detect joint locations and compute the joint space difference index (JSDI), which was defined as the chronological change in JSN between two radiographs. The purpose of this study was to establish the validity of the software that automatically evaluates the temporal change of JSN. This study consisted of 39 patients with RA. All patients were treated with tocilizumab and underwent hand radiography (left and right hand separately) at 0, 6, and 12 months. The JSN was evaluated using mTSS (modified Total Sharp Score) by one musculoskeletal radiologist as well as our automatic system. Software measurement showed that JSDI between 0 and 12 months was significantly higher than that between 0 and 6 months (p < 0.01). While, there was no significant difference in mTSS between 0, 6, and 12 months. The group with higher disease activity at 0 months had significantly higher JSDI between 0 and 6 months than that with lower disease activity (p = 0.02). The automatic software can evaluate JSN progression of RA patients in the finger joint on X-ray.

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Author notes

  1. Chiaki Narisawa and Kenneth Sutherland contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, North-12 West-5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0812, Japan

    Chiaki Narisawa

  2. Global Station for Medical Science and Engineering, Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education (GI-CoRE), Hokkaido University, North-15 West-7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-8638, Japan

    Kenneth Sutherland

  3. Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, North-12 West-5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-0812, Japan

    Yutong Lu & Tamotsu Kamishima

  4. Sagawa Akira Rheumatology Clinic, North-1 West-7, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, 060-0001, Japan

    Akira Furusaki & Akira Sagawa

Authors
  1. Chiaki Narisawa
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  2. Kenneth Sutherland
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  3. Yutong Lu
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  4. Akira Furusaki
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  5. Akira Sagawa
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  6. Tamotsu Kamishima
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tamotsu Kamishima.

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Video clip to show the flow of pattern matching. After models of hand, bone and finger joint ROI specification are consecutively matched, the baseline and follow up images are been aligned on the target joint, then the JSDI is computed by considering the pixels within the joint ROI. (AVI 261 kb)

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Narisawa, C., Sutherland, K., Lu, Y. et al. Validation of Fully Automatic Quantitative Software for Finger Joint Space Narrowing Progression for Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients. J Digit Imaging 33, 1387–1392 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-020-00390-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-020-00390-6

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