MDCT-QCT, QUS, and DXA in healthy adults: An intermodality comparison

Abstract

Background: Cortical deceleration is the main reason for bone loss at peripheral sites. It was suggested that when peripheral bones were assessed for osteoporosis, management and therapy can be administered early. The main aim of this study was to assess the relationships between the central and peripheral measurements at different skeleton bone sites (spine, femur, forearm, tibia, and calcaneus) with available modalities: DXA, QUS, and MDCT-QCT. Methods: The volunteers recruited in this study did not have any history or evidence of metabolic bone disease. Blood test and DXA measurements were used as inclusion criteria to select 40 healthy participants. The selected volunteers underwent 3 imaging modalities: QCT, DXA, and QUS. DXA-based measurements were made on 3 sites, including spine, femur, and forearm. QCT and QUS measurements were done for distal of tibia and calcaneus bones, respectively. The extracted parameters from the 3 modalities were analyzed using a bivariate (Pearson) correlation (r) in statistical software. Results: The results showed moderate to good correlations between spongy bones in central and peripheral sites from all the modalities. However, there was no correlation between MDCT measures and central bone values. According to correlations between different peripheral sits, aBMD of 33% radius and trabecular vBMD in 38% distal tibia showed weak but significant relationship between peripheral bones (r=-0.342, p=0.044). Conclusion: The findings demonstrated how bones in central and peripheral sites were correlated. Multimodality imaging was used in this group of healthy volunteers. Also, it was found that QCT-based MDCT needs more optimization and requires further investigations.

Application of a Neural Network Classifier to Radiofrequency-Based Osteopenia/Osteoporosis Screening

“…with the wrist circumference may serve as a promising predictor tool for detecting osteopenic/osteoporotic conditions on the wrist. Other recent studies have shown a strong correlation between bone density measurements in the arms, hip, and spine [44], [45]. Raw non-normalized data for the transmission coefficient through both wrists have been used as an input, without any normalization.…”

“…These results are obtained without the inclusion of any additional clinical risk factors. Given that other recent studies have shown a strong correlation between bone density measurements in the arms, hip, and spine [44] , [45] , the radio transmission data may be usable on their own as a predictor of bone density. Our approach has the potential for screening patients at risk for fragility fractures in the office, given the ease of implementation, small device size, and low costs associated with both the technique and the equipment.…”

Automatic phantom-less QCT system with high precision of BMD measurement for osteoporosis screening: Technique optimisation and clinical validation

“…However, the screening rate of osteoporosis is relatively low in China. Dual X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA), quantitative computed tomography (QCT) and quantitative ultrasound system (QUS) [ 6 , 7 ] are three main types of technologies applied in the bone mineral density (BMD) measurement currently. DXA has been widely used to measure BMD and diagnose osteoporosis in many countries [ 8 , 9 ].…”

Relationship between resolution and partial volume effect among μCT, MDCT and SDCT

“…To evaluate the microstructure of trabecular bone, it is necessary to consider the relationship between CT resolution and the diameter of trabecular bone, which is ~100 µm (Best et al, 2017;Boutroy et al, 2005). The high resolution of µCT enables evaluation of trabecular structure and direct measurement of trabecular orientation and volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD) (Burghardt et al, 2010;Boutroy et al, 2005;Malekzadeh et al, 2019). In contrast, as the resolution of MDCT is less than the trabecular diameter, one MDCT voxel includes both bone and cavity.…”

“…When the CT value of a voxel expresses the average of bone as well as cavity, this phenomenon is termed partial volume effect. MDCT cannot adequately measure the structure of trabecular bone; however, MDCT has shown significant correlation with µCT in terms of areal bone mineral density (aBMD) (Bissinger et al, 2010;2016), trabecular thickness (Gregorio et al, 2015;Malekzadeh et al, 2019), and bone density (Bauer et al, 2014). Accordingly, MDCT preserves the trabecular structure qualitatively.…”