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Noisy Knees

Physiologists at Massey University are listening to knees, with the aim of learning more about how arthritis can be detected at an early stage.

"As knees age they get more noisy, " says Dr Geoff Barnes. His team has been trying to correlate the sounds knee joints make with X-ray data from arthritic patients. Unfortunately, arthritic knees can look fine on an X-ray, Dr Barnes notes, making data collection difficult. His group plans to begin a new phase, using optical fibres to look at the knee structure directly and comparing visual data with the noises noted.