Relationship between compressive properties of human os calcis cancellous bone and microarchitecture assessed from 2D and 3D synchrotron microtomography

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of 2D and 3D microarchitectural characteristics in the assessment of the mechanical strength of os calcis cancellous bone. A sample of cancellous bone was removed in a medio-lateral direction from the posterior body of calcaneus, taken at autopsy in 17 subjects aged 61-91 years. The sample was first used for the assessment of morphological parameters from 2D morphometry and 3D synchrotron microtomography (ACT) (spatial resolution = 10 Am). The 2D morphometry was obtained from three slices extracted from the 3D ACT images. Very good concordance was shown between 3D ACT slices and the corresponding physical histologic slices. In 2D, the standard histomorphometric parameters, fractal dimension, mean intercept length, and connectivity were computed. In 3D, histomorphometric parameters were computed using both the 3D mean intercept length method and model-independent techniques. The 3D fractal dimension and the 3D connectivity, assessed by Euler density, were also evaluated. The cubic samples were subjected to elastic compressive tests in three orthogonal directions (X, Y, Z) close to the main natural trabecular network directions. A test was performed until collapse of trabecular network in the main direction (Z). The mechanical properties were significantly correlated to most morphological parameters resulting from 2D and 3D analysis. In 2D, the correlation between the mechanical strength and bone volume/tissue volume was not significantly improved by adding structural parameters or connectivity parameter (nodes number/tissue volume). In 3D, one architectural parameter (the trabecular thickness, Tb.Th) permitted to improve the estimation of the compressive strength from the bone volume/tissue volume alone. However, this improvement was minor since the correlation with the BV/TV alone was high (r = 0.96). In conclusion, which is in agreement with the statistic's rules, we found, in this study, that the determination of the os calcis bone compressive strength using the 3D bone volume fraction cannot be improved by adding 3D architectural parameters.

Bulk and interface investigations of scaffolds and tissue-engineered bones by X-ray microtomography and X-ray microdiffraction

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High-resolution Computed Tomography for Clinical Imaging of Bone Microarchitecture

“…There are numerous data over the last 20 years characterizing age, gender, and anatomic differences in cadaveric specimens of bone [13, 45, 52, 64, 67, 68, 94]. Clinical applications generally preclude access to the most relevant sites, such as the spine and proximal femur.…”

Intrinsic mechanical properties of trabecular calcaneus determined by finite-element models using 3D synchrotron microtomography

“…As previously published (Cendre et al, 1999;Follet et al, 2005) unconstrained compressive testing was performed on calcaneus trabecular specimens (cube of 9 Â 9 Â 9 mm 3 , Schenck RSA 250, Fig. 3).…”