Quantification of trabecular spatial orientation from low-resolution images

Changing trabecular patterns in panoramic radiographs of Swedish women during 25 years of follow-up

OBJECTIVES

The radiographic trabecular pattern on dental radiographs may be used to predict fractures. The aim of this study was to analyze longitudinal changes in the mandibles of 145 females between 1980 and 2005.

METHODS

Panoramic radiographs were obtained in 1980 and 2005. On 290 radiographs, regions of interest (ROIs) were selected in the ramus, angle and body. In all ROIs, the orientation was measured in 36 directions with the line frequency deviation method. The effects of ageing were analyzed for the fracture and the non-fracture groups separately.

RESULTS

During the follow-up, 61 females suffered fractures of the hip, wrist, spine, leg or arm. The fracture and non-fracture groups displayed dissimilar age changes in each investigated ROI. All significant changes pertained to increasing values of line frequency deviation. With increasing age, the trabecular network in the mandible lost details and the trabeculae became more aligned in their main direction. In the "ramus", the alignment was to the 110-120˚ axis, parallel to the posterior and anterior ramus border. In the "angle", the alignment was to the 135-150˚ axis, parallel to the oblique line, and in the "body" ROI to the 150-175˚ direction, approximately parallel to the occlusal plane and inferior cortex.

CONCLUSION

Most changes were consistent with the notion that the bone aged less severely in the non-fracture group. In the fracture group, the findings indicate that bone loss leads to redistribution of the remaining bone tissue in such a way that the trabeculae are accentuated perpendicular to the principal loading.

Finite Element-Based Mechanical Assessment of Bone Quality on the Basis of In Vivo Images

Beyond bone mineral density (BMD), bone quality designates the mechanical integrity of bone tissue. In vivo images based on X-ray attenuation, such as CT reconstructions, provide size, shape, and local BMD distribution and may be exploited as input for finite element analysis (FEA) to assess bone fragility. Further key input parameters of FEA are the material properties of bone tissue. This review discusses the main determinants of bone mechanical properties and emphasizes the added value, as well as the important assumptions underlying finite element analysis. Bone tissue is a sophisticated, multiscale composite material that undergoes remodeling but exhibits a rather narrow band of tissue mineralization. Mechanically, bone tissue behaves elastically under physiologic loads and yields by cracking beyond critical strain levels. Through adequate cell-orchestrated modeling, trabecular bone tunes its mechanical properties by volume fraction and fabric. With proper calibration, these mechanical properties may be incorporated in quantitative CT-based finite element analysis that has been validated extensively with ex vivo experiments and has been applied increasingly in clinical trials to assess treatment efficacy against osteoporosis.

On the Use of Bone Remodelling Models to Estimate the Density Distribution of Bones. Uniqueness of the Solution

Bone remodelling models are widely used in a phenomenological manner to estimate numerically the distribution of apparent density in bones from the loads they are daily subjected to. These simulations start from an arbitrary initial distribution, usually homogeneous, and the density changes locally until a bone remodelling equilibrium is achieved. The bone response to mechanical stimulus is traditionally formulated with a mathematical relation that considers the existence of a range of stimulus, called dead or lazy zone, for which no net bone mass change occurs. Implementing a relation like that leads to different solutions depending on the starting density. The non-uniqueness of the solution has been shown in this paper using two different bone remodelling models: one isotropic and another anisotropic. It has also been shown that the problem of non-uniqueness is only mitigated by removing the dead zone, but it is not completely solved unless the bone formation and bone resorption rates are limited to certain maximum values.