UC Riverside

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most prevalent chronic joint diseases. 44 The rate of osteoarthritis is on the rise due to the ageing population and the outbreak of obesity. 2 It had been recognized that current diagnostic methods of OA are established late in the disease process and at times too late for any disease-modifying drugs to have any effect.1

Although many still-imaging procedures and biochemical marker analyses have been developed to monitor the disease, there is a lack of techniques to characterize the mechanical properties of the different layers cartilage impacted by osteoarthritis especially at an early stage.1 Moreover, a number of elastography methods are destructive. Non-destructive techniques based on ultrasound have been reported in literature, but the inherent resolution limitations makes it difficult to use for assessing the thin layers in a joint. In order to obtain a more accurate definition of OA, this thesis proposes an OCT elastography technique to quantify the progression of tissue stiffness in rat articular cartilage affected by OA.