Characterization of early stage cartilage degradation using diffuse reflectance near infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

Interest in localized and early stage treatment technologies for joint conditions such as osteoarthritis is growing rapidly. It has therefore become important to develop objective measures capable of characterizing the earliest (non-visible) changes associated with degeneration to aid treatment procedures. In addition to assessing tissue before treatment, it is further important to develop an effective, non-destructive means of monitoring post-treatment tissue healing, and of providing the high-quality data needed for trials of developing treatment methods. To investigate its ability to detect the early stages of degeneration in cartilage-on-bone, diffuse reflectance near infrared spectroscopy was applied to normal and osteoarthritic joints. A discriminating function was developed to relate absorbance peaks of interest and track degradation around focal osteoarthritic defects. The function could distinguish between normal and degraded tissue (100% separation of normal tissue from that within 25 mm of a defect) and between different stages of osteoarthritic progression (p < 0.05). This technique allows simple, practical and non-destructive assessment of component-level properties over the full depth of the tissue. It has the potential to increase our understanding of the underlying etiologic and pathogenic processes in early stage degeneration, to assist classification and the development of new treatment methods.

A Feasibility Study on the Potential Use of Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy to Analyze Meat in Live Animals: Discrimination of Muscles

“…The most relevant changes were observed in the long NIR wavelength region where differences were observed at 7100 cm ) was reported by other authors to be associated with cartilage when pure bovine cartilage samples were analyzed using NIR spectroscopy [25][26][27]. These wavenumbers were associated with C-H combination and asymmetric first overtones of C-N-C stretch and N-H of proteins [25][26][27].…”

“…These wavenumbers were associated with C-H combination and asymmetric first overtones of C-N-C stretch and N-H of proteins [25][26][27]. This region appears to be unique between the different tissues (e.g., fat, muscle, and skin) analyzed, indicating that differences in the absorbance values can be attributed to different protein and collagen ratios between tissues.…”

Vibrational spectroscopy of articular cartilage

“…A discriminant analysis function was built based on clearly identifiable NIR absorption peaks in raw and 2nd derivative spectra. The function distinguished the normal cartilage from degraded tissue with greater than 95% accuracy (88). Potential of NIR spectroscopy for recognizing cartilage degradation in a rat OA model has also been studied.…”

Near infrared spectroscopic evaluation of water in hyaline cartilage

“…Another series of studies by Brown demonstrated the correlation of NIR spectroscopic data to severity of cartilage degeneration in enzymatically degraded 11 and osteoarthritic tissues 12 .…”