Sally Roberts is a research scientist working in RJAH Orthopaedic Hospital; Oswestry; UK (linked to Keele University) with clinicians who deliver cell therapy to patients for cartilage defects and other degenerative joint disorders. She also has a long standing interest in the intervertebral disc and its role in spinal disorders. She has been active in developing reliable meaningful outcome measures of success; particularly in attempting to try and establish internationally standardized histological techniques and scoring schemes of histology of cartilage repair in humans. Whilst this provides information on the structure of the tissue; it is inevitably destructive; which in the case of human patients is obviously not ideal. Hence she is increasingly interested in imaging modalities as alternative outcome measures for assessing the quality of repair tissue following cell therapy in particular.