Scoring systems for osteoarthritis of the hip in radiology

Abstract With the rising incidence of hip osteoarthritis, the need for reliable tools to assess disease burden has become increasingly important—both for tailoring individualized treatment strategies and for research purposes, where accurate stratification of disease severity is essential for patient profiling. In this context, structured scoring systems applied to imaging modalities can offer reproducible and standardized evaluations of joint involvement. The aim of this work is to provide a methodological narrative review of the most widely used and clinically relevant hip osteoarthritis scoring systems. The focus is strictly methodological: we do not address the pictorial appearance of these systems, nor do we provide image-based examples, as this is not intended to be a pictorial review. The systems included in this review were selected based on their perceived relevance and frequency of use in both clinical and research settings. While we acknowledge the existence of many other valid and potentially useful tools, a comprehensive inclusion was beyond the scope of this paper and would have hindered its methodological focus.