The aspherical human hip: implication for early osteoarthritis

• Published in: Studies in health technology and informatics Vol. 184; p. 195
• Main Authors: Hefny, Mohamed S, Dickinson, Andrew W L, Giles, Andrew E, Wood, Gavin C A, Ellis, Randy E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands 2013
• Subjects: Arthrography - methods; Early Diagnosis; Femoracetabular Impingement - complications; Femoracetabular Impingement - diagnostic imaging; Humans; Osteoarthritis, Hip - diagnostic imaging; Osteoarthritis, Hip - etiology; Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Tomography, X-Ray Computed - methods
• ISSN: 0926-9630
• DOI: 10.3233/978-1-61499-209-7-195

One marker for early-onset hip arthritis is femoral acetabular impingement. The current standard way of quantifying impingement is manual calculation of anatomical measures on plain radiographs, including the α-angle. Such measurements are user-dependent and prone to error. We provided a robust computational alternative and proposed using numerical fitting of geometrical shapes. We applied least-squares fitting of an ellipse to the femoral head contour and used the difference between the ellipse axes as a quantification method. The results showed a good correlation between the new measure and previous definitions of the α-angle.