Abstract. We present a method to measure cartilage thickness from CT images in the sub millimeter range. Current methods based on zero crossings of second derivatives across the cartilage layers are known to be biased in the sub millimeter range due to the finite width of the point spread function (PSF) of the imaging system. We developed a method for accurate thickness measurements of such small layers by taking into account the effect of the PSF. To this end the orientation of the cartilage layers is estimated using gradient vector information in the cartilage region. Subsequently, a model of the attenuation profile across the cartilage layer is convolved with a measured PSF to obtain an intensity profile that is fitted to the image data. Results of thickness estimates from simulated image data reveal that our method is unbiased in contrast to the method based on second derivative zero crossings. We illustrate the usefulness of our method by comparing measurement on CT arthrography images with results obtained from high resolution anatomical sections that served as a reference. We conclude that incorporation of the PSF in the measurement method allows for accurate cartilage thickness estimates even in the sub millimeter range.
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