Early osteoporosis detection hope
August 2006People at risk of the bone-thinning condition osteoporosis could benefit from exciting new research in the Division of Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering. A team headed by Professor Tim Cootes hopes to devise a quicker and more accurate way of identifying vertebral (spine) fractures, which affect one in three women and one in five men over 50 and can be the first clinical sign of osteoporosis.
Fractures are currently detected by x-ray examination and a newer type of imaging called DXA, but radiologists have to assess the fracture and its severity manually which can be time-consuming and inaccurate.
Three-year grant
Now the Arthritis Research Campaign has awarded a three-year grant of £226,000 for the team to develop a new computer programme, which will detect the vertebrae in each x-ray/DXA image, indicate whether any are fractured, and if so how badly.Tim said: “Detecting osteoporosis early by improving diagnostic techniques could be hugely important, as proven therapies are available for patients with vertebral fractures which reduce the incidence of subsequent fractures by 50% or more.”
“The tool we are developing will help obtain more consistent results, and should be able to detect more subtle changes than are currently possible. It will also be extremely useful in monitoring people during clinical trials of drugs designed to treat the osteoporosis, and in the long-term we would expect to use it to measure the progression of the disease over time.”
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