Imaging research results from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI): a review and lessons learned 10 years after start of enrolment

Abstract

The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) is a multicentre, prospective, observational, cohort study of knee osteoarthritis (OA) that began recruitment in 2004. The OAI provides public access to clinical and image data, enabling researchers to examine risk factors/predictors and the natural history of knee OA incidence and progression, and the qualification of imaging and other biomarkers. In this narrative review, we report imaging findings and lessons learned 10 years after enrolment has started. A literature search for full text articles published from the OAI was performed up to 31 December 2013 using Pubmed and the OAI web page. We summarise the rationale, design and imaging protocol of the OAI, and the history of OAI publications. We review studies from early partial, and later full OAI public data releases. The latter are structured by imaging method and tissue, reviewing radiography and then MRI findings on cartilage morphology, cartilage lesions and composition (T2), bone, meniscus, muscle and adipose tissue. Finally, analyses directly comparing findings from MRI and radiography are summarised. Ten years after the first participants were enrolled and first papers published, the OAI has become an invaluable resource to the OA research community. It has fuelled novel methodological approaches of analysing images, and has provided a wealth of information on OA pathophysiology. Continued collection and public release of long-term observations will help imaging measures to gain scientific and regulatory acceptance as 'prognostic' or 'efficacy of intervention' biomarkers, potentially enabling shorter and more efficient clinical trials that can test structure-modifying therapeutic interventions (NCT00080171).

Responsiveness of Infrapatellar Fat Pad Volume Change to Body Weight Loss or Gain: Data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative

“…The data used in this study were obtained from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) image and clinical data repository (public access; http://www.oai.ucsf.edu/) with previously published inclusion criteria [Eckstein et al, 2012[Eckstein et al, , 2014. The study population (n = 4,796) was recruited at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Ohio State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island.…”

Intra- and inter-observer reliability of quantitative analysis of the infra-patellar fat pad and comparison between fat- and non-fat-suppressed imaging—Data from the osteoarthritis initiative

“…The participants used in this analysis were taken from the healthy reference cohort of the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) data base (Eckstein et al, 2014, 2012). The OAI is a multicenter, longitudinal, prospective observational study that provides public access to clinical datasets, radiographs, MRIs and bio-specimens from serum and urine, so that researchers can explore the predictive value of biomarkers for knee OA onset and progression (Eckstein et al, 2014, 2012).…”

“…The OAI is a multicenter, longitudinal, prospective observational study that provides public access to clinical datasets, radiographs, MRIs and bio-specimens from serum and urine, so that researchers can explore the predictive value of biomarkers for knee OA onset and progression (Eckstein et al, 2014, 2012). Between February 2004 and May 2006, the OAI recruited 4796 participants, aged 45–79 years, at four clinical centers.…”

Imaging Strategies for Assessing Cartilage Composition in Osteoarthritis

“…3D datasets have demonstrated the enhanced ability to detect site-specific variation in cartilage biochemistry that would other-wise be unavailable with 2D sequence [51]. On a larger scale, the Osteoarthritis Initiative uses this technique to assess in vivo cartilage composition in many types of patients [52–54]. …”