Nip arthritis in the bud

AI detects Osteoarthritis three years before symptoms

Svetlana Maslova, Hi-tech+

Today, this debilitating disease is detected with the first sensations of pain in the joint, when cartilage damage is already progressing. A new simple examination method will allow you to find the beginnings of a disease that other diagnostic tools do not "see" today. If you start prevention at this point, then osteoarthritis can be made a potentially reversible disease.

A study by American scientists from Johns Hopkins University has shown that using artificial intelligence tools, it is possible to predict the development of osteoarthritis by analyzing the structure of cartilage. They have developed an AI that determines the initial stages of the disease with 78% accuracy three years before the first symptoms. The results of the study are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Kundu et al., Enabling early detection of osteoarthritis from presymptomatic cartage texture maps via transport-based learning).

The cartilage in this MRI image of the knee is colored to show a greater contrast between shades of gray. Figure from the press release Artificial Intelligence Detects Arthritis Before it Develops - VM.

Early diagnosis of osteoarthritis is especially important because preventive measures such as weight loss and certain types of exercise can make the disease less serious or even delay its onset for a long time, scientists explain.

Today, the disease is diagnosed already at a progressive stage, when the patient is in pain. This means that irreversible damage develops. And even then, not all cases of osteoarthritis are detected.

AI training was conducted using data from 86 people without symptoms of osteoarthritis, who were then monitored for three years. Early biochemical changes in cartilage were evaluated, which precede the appearance of symptoms by several years.

"Our results show that future osteoarthritis can potentially be predicted three years before gold standard instruments can do it," the authors emphasize. This is a potentially reversible stage of the disease, when with the help of early interventions, irreversible damage can be prevented, they add.

Scientists will continue research on a larger sample of patients to improve the diagnostic capabilities of AI.

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