Characteristics of Distal Femoral Articular Cartilage in Six Weeks Post-Traumatic Osteoarthritis by a Sub-critical Impact.

Traumatized knee greatly contributes to Osteoarthritis of the knee in young adults. To intervene effectively before the onset of severe structural disruption, detection of the disease at the early onset is crucial. In this study, we put together the findings for the detection of osteoarthritis from the femoral knee joint cartilage of the rabbit at six weeks post-trauma. Articular cartilage samples are taken from the impacted and non-impacted joints at zero week (serving as the control group) and at six weeks post-trauma by minimal force. The samples were imaged using µMRI at 11.7 µm/pixel and Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM) at 1 µm/pixel. In addition, an Inductively Coupled Plasma - Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) analysis was performed using the adjacent cartilage samples. The outcomes of this study demonstrate an increase in T2 values in 6weeks samples compared to the 0week samples by µMRI technique, indicating a general increase of tissue hydration within cartilage. PLM detects a decrease in the average thickness of the SZ in the post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) samples, significant in the impacted femurs. There was an average increasing trend of maximum retardation in the tide mark in comparison to the reported calcium concentration (mg/L) in impacted samples suggesting a possible rise in mineralization in the 6weeks samples. Qualitatively, physical observation of the joint after 6weeks showed signs of reddening in the anterior femur suggesting the disease process is a localized phenomenon. Through microscopic imaging, we are able to detect these changes at 6weeks post-trauma qualitatively and quantitatively. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.