Detecting osteoarthritis before patients need joint replacement is at the heart of a USask research project. College of Medicine professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology, Brian Eames, says he and his colleagues used phased contrast imaging, which can only be done using a synchrotron, to get a much more detailed look at cartilage health.

He explains that it’s non-invasive rather than having to go in and get a sample of the tissue to figure out what is happening. They found that phase contrast imaging using the synchrotron on campus detects very subtle changes in cartilage, which could mean being able to increase the ability to detect osteoarthritis earlier than regular clinical monitoring, giving doctors more options for early treatment.

Eames points out that the pain from the disease comes in the late stages, so by the time you get to the doctor, your options for treatment are fewer, “and therefore the therapies for that are pretty extreme. You have to go in and just surgically lop off the end of the bone and replace it with these artificial tissues that mimic the normal tissues.” Instead, he hopes that someone will find a way to take synchrotron technology, which fills a football field, and make it more portable for clinical use, so that phased contrast imaging would be more readily available. That way, people might instead have a cartilage image taken annually, so it could be caught in earlier stages, similar to women getting regular mammograms.

Eames says the Canadian Light Source is a nice test case for the technology that others can try to adapt for clinical use. He calls the CLS an amazing machine and adds that it is one of the reasons he moved to the University of Saskatchewan. “Everyone should be really proud of this gem we have in our backyard here in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon has the only synchrotron in Canada.” He recommends taking a free, public tour of the CLS. Click here for tour information.