Bionic Identification Of Knee Osteoarthritis Based On Multi-physical Field Coupling

Knee osteoarthritis is a chronic and degenerative disease that occurs in the middle-aged and elderly,which is characterized by articular cartilage wear,osteophyte formation and subchondral osteosclerosis and accompanied by joint pain,stiffness,deformity,muscle atrophy and other symptoms.In severe cases,it can lead to joint movement disorders or even disability.Meanwhile,knee osteoarthritis is also known as “undead cancer” because of its high incidence rate and high disability rate,which seriously affects the quality of life of patients and causes huge medical and financial burden to families and society.At present,the clinical focus is on articular cartilage,using X-ray,computed tomography,magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound imaging methods,with articular cartilage wear and joint space stenosis as the landmark pathological characteristics of knee osteoarthritis,to diagnose and evaluate knee osteoarthritis.However,structural lesions such as articular cartilage often occur in the middle and late stages of the disease,and once the articular cartilage is worn,it will be irreversible,and the disease is easy to miss the best period of treatment due to the late detection.In addition,the conservative treatment of knee osteoarthritis is mainly to relieve pain,but it can't cure the disease,and surgical treatment will cause joint internal injury,make patients bear pain and high medical costs.In the face of the bottleneck problem of clinical diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis and huge medical demand,researchers have carried out a lot of research using imaging and biochemical methods,but there is no effective method for early diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis.Therefore,how to diagnose and evaluate knee osteoarthritis in the early stage of its occurrence and development has become a worldwide problem.In recent years,more and more researchers have found that osteoarthritis is a total joint disease,involving the lower limb bone,meniscus,synovium,muscle,tendon,ligament and other tissues.Especially in the early stage of knee osteoarthritis,the abnormal changes of articular cartilage and other tissues have not yet reached the diagnostic standard of imaging detection methods,while the corresponding pathological changes may have occurred in the soft tissues around the knee joint,such as muscles,tendons,ligaments and blood vessels.Therefore,it provides a new way to explore the new mechanism of knee osteoarthritis and seek the early diagnosis method of knee osteoarthritis.Bionics is the science of learning and simulating nature,and realizing the bionic development concept and development mode of returning to nature in the constructed artificial products.It is an effective shortcut to solve the major problems of economic and social development faced by human beings.The research content of modern bionics is no longer limited to the simulation of biology,but also focuses on the exploration of some phenomena in human life,and attempts to bionic all the useful information for human beings,especially taking human life as the model of life and bionic simulation as the biological model.In the long history of development,Chinese medicine and Western medicine have accumulated a lot of clinical experience,and formed an effective disease diagnosis method,which still has a very important reference and application value.By virtue of human senses,doctor of traditional Chinese medicine collects clinical information through the methods of looking,smelling,asking and cutting,and draws diagnostic conclusions;Western medicine uses its own senses and simple inspection tools to understand and evaluate the state of the human body through inspection,palpation,percussion,auscultation and olfactory diagnosis.Among them,“body palpation and pulse diagnosis” in the four diagnosis of traditional Chinese medicine is similar to the “palpation” of Western medicine,which can obtain the relevant information of human soft tissue,such as body surface temperature and humidity;tenderness and friction;the location,size,contour,hardness,mobility and adhesion with surrounding soft tissue of the mass were analyzed;the location,velocity,intensity and rhythm of arterial pulsation were recorded.Chinese medicine and Western medicine provide us with precious bionic model through the process of diagnosis of diseases through “pulse feeling and palpation”(body palpation and pulse diagnosis)and “palpation” which enlightens us to solve the bottleneck problem of early diagnosis of diseases with bionic thinking.The main soft tissues around the knee joint,such as muscles,tendons,ligaments and blood vessels are the key points in this study.Based on the diagnosis methods of“pulse feeling and palpation”(body palpation and pulse diagnosis)of Chinese medicine and “palpation” of Western medicine,the relevant parameters of soft tissue multi-physical fields are obtained by using in vivo,noninvasive and quantitative modern imaging technology,and machine learning method is used to recognize healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis.The bionic identification of knee osteoarthritis based on multi-physical field coupling in this paper provides a new idea for exploring the new mechanism of knee osteoarthritis and seeking the early diagnosis method of knee osteoarthritis,and plays an important role in promoting the development of human traditional disease identification methods to the direction of quantification and automation.The specific research contents and main conclusions are as follows:(1)Study on mechanical modulus field of soft tissue around the knee joint.In this paper,9 muscles and 6 tendons and ligaments around the knee joint were selected as the measurement objects,and the Young's moduli of muscles,tendons,and ligaments were measured in vivo,noninvasively and quantitatively by using the ultrasonic elastic imaging system.It was found that gender and age had significant effects on the Young's moduli of muscles,tendons,and ligaments around the knee joint in healthy participants.The Young's moduli of muscles,tendons,and ligaments in male were higher than that in female;the Young's moduli of muscles,tendons,and ligaments decreased with age,except for some soft tissues.This paper also explored the differences of Young's moduli of muscles,tendons,and ligaments between healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis;the Young's moduli of most muscles,tendons,and ligaments in women were significantly different between healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis,and the Young's modulus in patients with knee osteoarthritis were higher than that in healthy participants.At the same time,we also studied the effects of different pain location on the Young's moduli of the muscles,tendons,and ligaments around the knee joint,and found that the Young's moduli of the quadriceps femoris tendon,patellar tendon,medial collateral ligament and lateral patellar retinaculum were closely related to the pain locations of the knee joint.(2)Study on blood flow field around the knee joint.In this paper,7 main arteries supplying blood to the knee joint were selected as the measurement objects,and the diameter,blood flow velocity and blood flow volume of the arteries were measured in vivo,noninvasively and quantitatively by color Doppler ultrasound.It was found that gender and age had no significant effect on the morphological parameters of the arteries around the knee joint in healthy participants;there were significant differences in hemodynamic parameters of individual vessels between different genders,and the hemodynamic parameters in male was larger than that in female.The differences of blood flow parameters between healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis were also explored;the hemodynamic parameters of most blood vessels were significantly different between healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis,and hemodynamic parameters in patients with knee osteoarthritis were larger than that in healthy participants.(3)Study on temperature field of soft tissue around the knee joint.In this paper,the surface temperature of muscles,tendons,ligaments and arteries around the knee joint were measured in vivo,noninvasively and quantitatively by infrared thermal imager;only a few soft tissue surface temperatures had significant differences between different genders,and the surface temperature of soft tissue in male was higher than that in female.This paper also explored the difference of soft tissue surface temperature between healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis,and found that only a part of the soft tissue surface temperature had significant difference,and the surface temperature of soft tissue in patients with knee osteoarthritis were larger than that in healthy participants.(4)Bionic identification of knee osteoarthritis based on machine learning.Based on the measured parameters of mechanical modulus field,blood flow field and temperature field of soft tissues around the knee joint,five machine learning methods including decision tree,BP neural network,self-organizing competitive neural network,learning vector quantization neural network and extreme learning machine were used to identify healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis.The recognition accuracy of extreme learning machine in healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis were 90%-100% and 85%-95% respectively,and the overall recognition rate was 90%-97.5%.Extreme learning machine has high recognition rate and stable recognition accuracy for healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis.It can be used as a machine learning model to identify healthy participants and patients with knee osteoarthritis.