Spectral analysis and connectivity of porous microstructures in bone

Effect of rotation on wave propagation through a poroelastic wet bone with cavity

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the wave propagation of wave in an infinite poroelastic cylindrical bone. The dynamic behavior of a wet long bone that has been modeled as a piezoelectric hollow cylinder of crystal class 6 is investigated.

Design/methodology/approach

An exact closed form solution is presented by employing an analytical procedure. The frequency equation for poroelastic bone is obtained when the boundaries are stress free and is examined numerically.

Findings

The study of wave propagation over a continuous medium is of practical importance in the field of engineering, medicine and bio-engineering. Application of the poroelastic materials in medicinal fields such as orthopedics, dental and cardiovascular is well known. In orthopedics, wave propagation over bone is used in monitoring the rate of fracture healing. There are two types of osseous tissue, such as cancellous or trabecular and compact or cortical bone, which are of different materials, with respect to their mechanical behavior.

Originality/value

The frequencies are calculated for poroelastic bone for various values for different values of rotation, angular velocity and density. In wet bone little velocity dispersion was observed, in contrast to the results of earlier studies on wet bone. Large values of attenuation were observed. Such a model would in particular be useful in large-scale parametric studies of bone mechanical response.

Commonality in the microarchitecture of trabecular bone: A preliminary study

Understanding the relationship between the microstructure and mechanical function of trabecular bone is critical for prediction and prevention of bone fragility fractures. However, a detailed understanding of the structural design of trabecular microarchitecture is still missing. This study hypothesized that there exists a commonality in the underlying probabilistic distributions of microstructural features of trabecular bones, whereas the microstructural differences among individuals are primarily describe by a set of scalar parameters. To test the hypothesis, twenty-three trabecular bone specimens were obtained from two anatomic locations (i.e., femoral neck and vertebral body) and a diverse group of seventeen donors of different age and sex. The number, size, spatial location, and orientation of individual plates and rods in the trabecular bone specimens were determined via volumetric decomposition of 3D μCT images using the Individual Trabecula Segmentation (ITS) technique. Then, m/n bootstrap Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were performed to compare the normalized distributions of size, orientation, and spatial arrangement of trabecular plates and rods in the specimens. The results showed that 100% of the twenty-three normalized distributions of each microstructural feature were statistically equivalent irrespective of individual differences among the bone specimens, except the distributions of rod spatial arrangement (<100%). On the other hand, nonparametric Mann-Whitney U tests showed that a set of scalar parameters (i.e., the number, average size, and average nearest neighbor distance of trabecular plates and rods) were statistically different among the individual specimens (p<0.05). Due to the commonality of the underlying distributions, the individual differences in the trabecular microstructure among the specimens seemed to be reflected primarily by changes in the scalar parameters. The above results strongly support the hypothesis of this study and may shed more light on understanding the natural design of trabecular bone microstructures.

Anderson Transition for Classical Transport in Composite Materials

The Anderson transition in solids and optics is a wave phenomenon where disorder induces localization of the wave functions. We find here that the hallmarks of the Anderson transition are exhibited by classical transport at a percolation threshold-without wave interference or scattering effects. As long range order or connectedness develops, the eigenvalue statistics of a key random matrix governing transport cross over toward universal statistics of the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble, and the field eigenvectors delocalize. The transition is examined in resistor networks, human bone, and sea ice structures.