To describe the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between quantitative measures of infrapatellar fat pad (IPFP) signal-intensity alteration and knee structural abnormalities in patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis (OA).
A total of 261 patients (mean ± SD age 63.0 ± 7.2 years) with symptomatic knee OA were selected from a randomized controlled trial with a follow-up of 2 years. IPFP signal-intensity alterations at baseline were quantitatively measured on T2-weighted fat-saturated magnetic resonance imaging using MATLAB. These quantitative measures included the SD of whole IPFP signal intensity measurement, the upper quartile value of high signal intensity (UQ
Higher baseline SD of the IPFP, UQ
Quantitative measures of increased signal intensity in the IPFP were associated with knee structural abnormalities in the tibiofemoral compartment, suggesting that these measurements could be used as an additional entry criterion to enrich studies for faster progressors of knee OA.