Trabecular angle of the human talus is associated with the level of cartilage degeneration.

The architecture of bone trabeculae is based on the direction of stresses applied to the bone. The human talar dome receives compressive forces from the tibia and, to a much lesser extent, the fibula when standing, walking, and running, and transmits the force downward to the calcaneus through the talar body and anterior to the navicular via the talar head. As a result, the body of the talus has predominately vertical trabeculae. However, here we hypothesize that cartilage degeneration at the articular surface is associated with trabecular angle within the associated bone, as a reflection of joint alignment and/or biomechanics (stability, congruence, angulation, etc). Through measurement of trabecular angle with Fast Fourier Transform Analysis, we show a positive correlation between the cartilage degeneration score of the articular surface of the talar dome and the angle of trabecular deviation from the perpendicular axis of the dome (right talus R=0.75, p<0.01; left talus R=0.79, p<0.01).