Joint Angle Correction in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Its Reliability Analysis Based on Phase Dispersion Quantification

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a form of autoimmune disease characterized by synovitis that can ultimately cause joint deformities and impaired functioning. The cartilage destruction is one of the most important indicators for diagnosis and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and it is radiographically manifested as joint space narrowing. Issue: In the literature, the joint space narrowing progression between a baseline and its follow-up finger joint images can be quantified by using image registration algorithm. We found that the inconsistencies of joint angles may lead to characteristic mismatches and thus severely affect the accuracy of joint space narrowing quantifications. Methods: In this work, we introduce a rotation invariant phase only correlation in joint space narrowing quantification for the joint angle correction. Further, we propose a confidence index to quantify the quantification reliability of phase only correlation based on phase dispersion in phase difference spectrum. Conclusion: In our clinical experiments, the proposed quantification method can effectively overcome and manage the mismatch due to the inconsistency of joint angles. Additionally, the confidence index shows a high consistency with the joint space narrowing progression examinations manually done by a trained radiologist and one radiological technologist.