The authors have designed a study, that if carried to fruition, will eventually be an invasive ultrasound technique. They plan to study the earliest changes of degenerative arthritis, that is, fibrillatory change in articular cartilage presently undetected by any other imaging technique currently in use. They use a sonographic robust angular scattering technique to quantify joint surface roughness and have utilized it in phantoms and a few cartilage specimens. The rougher the cartilage surface, the larger has been the mean backscattered power and the more pronounced the surface fibrillations. In this study they wish to validate their initial work in vitro among articular cartilage specimens and correlate their parameters with actual histology and surface roughness evaluations. Eventually, as a long term goal, they will develop an intraluminal probe used in conjunction with needle arthroscopy to test the applicability in patients who currently undergo such invasive procedures for diagnosis.
