ReadMyXray is a website designed for reading of bones from x-rays of hand and knee joints

Your doctor’s examination

Your doctor examines visually knee or hand x-rays for the presence of osteoarthritis. The radiographic examination captures only the later stages of osteoarthritis when pathological damages to your bone, cartilage and/or menisci are already established.

The examination includes a grading of joint space narrowing and marginal osteophytes.

Joint space narrowing and osteophytes are often merged into one scale of increasing osteoarthritis severity. At the same time, sclerosis and bone deformity are also examined. The final result is a grade from 0 to 4 indicating the osteoarthritis severity, based on the Kellgren-Lawrence grading system.

  • grade 0 – no radiographic osteoarthritis
  • grade 1 – doubtful joint space narrowing and possible osteophytes
  • grade 2 – definite osteophytes and possible joint space narrowing
  • grade 3 – multiple osteophytes, definite joint space narrowing, sclerosis, possible bony deformity
  • grade 4 – large osteophytes, marked joint space narrowing, severe sclerosis and definitely bony deformity

Radiographic osteoarthritis is often defined as the Kellgren-Lawrence grade equals two or more (K-L grade ≥ 2).

Our examination

We extend your doctor examination by reading numerically the tibia and phalanges. Our readings are sensitive to subtle (unseen to human eye) changes occurring in the tibia due to osteoarthritis. By reading these changes we could potentially capture the early stages of osteoarthritis or even predict the onset of this disease and its progression.

We read the selected regions of the bones on x-rays. For knees, these regions are located under medial and lateral compartments as shown below.

Our reading describes how coarse is bone texture in all directions, especially in the vertical, horizontal and roughest part direction.

For each bone region we produce a plot of roughness coefficients (black dots) to which we fit an ellipse (dotted lines). The roughest part direction is along the line running through the smallest distance across the ellipse (red line).



Based on the plot we calculate four basic radiographic measures:

  • FDMEAN  – a measure of roughness in all directions (mean of all dots)
  • FDV, FDH – a measure of roughness along the vertical (green) and horizontal (blue) direction
  • FDSta – a measure of roughness along the roughest part direction (red)

The measures range from 2 to 3, with higher values representing higher roughness.

Our research shows that the measures calculated for hands and knees at early and late stages of osteoarthritis were respectively higher and lower than those calculated for joints without radiographic osteoarthritis.