Newly funded: Harnessing quantitative MRI techniques to detect early-stage hip disorders that can lead to hip replacement
October 28, 2021
Editor's Note: A pair of new funding awards for College of Veterinary Medicine faculty members will tackle joint disorders caused by impaired blood flow that can lead to osteoarthritis.
Assistant Professors Ferenc Toth and Casey Johnson will lead and co-investigate parallel studies, one aiming to better understand juvenile osteochondritis dissecans and one that aims to detect earlier a hip disorder called osteonecrosis of the femoral head that is often the precursor to a hip replacement.
This week, a look at the new funding award for Dr. Johnson. We will highlight Dr. Toth’s award next week.
Chances are you know someone who’s had a hip replacement or you’ve had one yourself.
About 250,000 Americans require one each year, 10 percent of which are caused by a hip disorder that can affect children or adults called osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH). Typically, ONFH isn’t discovered by traditional MRI techniques until it’s too late. Even for those folks for whom early intervention is possible using the standard treatment of core decompression surgery, a hip replacement is all but a forgone conclusion in 30 to 50 percent of cases.
Now, new funding from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases will allow College of Veterinary Medicine researchers, in collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and the Division of Biostatistics, to determine whether using quantitative MRI techniques will allow them to detect sooner lesions at the head of the femur that are caused by inhibited blood flow—a potential sign of ONFH. Quantitative MRI refers to the measurement of the numeric values of signal intensities of an image as distinct from the ‘qualitative’ visual analysis of it.
Leading the charge is MRI specialist Casey Johnson, PhD, in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, who with his team will analyze cellular changes driving the sensitivity of quantitative MRI methods from images of piglets—and compare that with microscopic analyses of femoral tissues. In future studies, the team plans to similarly analyze rabbits with the most common cause of ONFH in an effort to characterize the ability of quantitative MRI to detect the disease early and monitor both how the disease progresses and the effects of treatment. They then plan to conduct exploratory studies to detect early-stage injury and monitor treatment response for up to two years in human ONFH patients undergoing core decompression surgery. The goal: to determine how quantitative MRI measures show differently between patients whose treatment fails and patients for whom the treatment succeeded.
The current one-year award amounts to about $541,000, and the study began late last month.
Johnson and his team believe quantitative MRI can detect the disease early enough compared to traditional MRI that the disease could be reversed. They believe the quantitative techniques can better predict and monitor treatment response, too. Ultimately, they hope this work will reduce the burden of osteoarthritis by fostering early detection and better prediction of clinical outcomes—to better inform treatment decisions.
