Evaluation of Osteoarthritic degeneration of knee cartilage using Micro-CT arthrography in a rat Model

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a very spread unavoidable disease along with the aging of the human being. A lot of remedies for OA were developed and experimented in diverse animal models on behalf of human. It is essential to investigate the transition of OA progress in the animal models, therefore observations through the same animal according to its OA progress could definitely help the researchers to diagnose OA severity of the same animal subject. In this context, in vivo imaging of cartilage degeneration using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) arthrography could be an excellent tool to investigate the OA progress of a small animal such as rats. We investigated the micro-CT arthrogram (Skyscan-1076) with hexabrix302 as a contrast for in vivo evaluation of OA severity in a rat model. OA was induced in the both knees of the two groups (MIA3 and MIA5 groups) of rats by injection of monoiodoacetate (MIA) 3mg or 5mg each, and the rats of control group were injected of saline solution instead of MIA. The rat knees were imaged by micro-CT arthrography at 2, 14 and 28 days after MIA injection, and evaluated along the time period among the groups. In conclusion, micro-CT arthrogram showed worse degeneration images of knee cartilages in the order of MIA5, MIA3 and Control groups along the time sequence. However the leakage and the biased distribution of hexabrix302 in the patellae were left over as a problem to solve for further quantification of micro-CT arthrography