Assessing methods for characterising local and global structural and biomechanical properties of the trabecular bone network
Irina Sidorenko Germany
Abstract:
The Scaling Index Method (SIM) is a noval technique, which reveals local topological characteristics of the arbitrary structure and allows to differentiate between plate and rod elements. We apply SIM to trabecular network of the human bone and compare its predictive power in differentiation between strong and weak bones with the Finite Element Method (FEM), morphological parameters and Minkowski Functionals (MF). To assess the diagnostic performance of different methods we correlate texture measures derived from µCT images (isotropic resolution 26µm) of 151 specimens taken from the trabecular part of human vertebrae in vitro with the maximum compressive strength (MCS) obtained in biomechanical tests. A linear regression analysis reveals that texture measures based on the FEM, SIM and the first MF correlate well with each other both on global and local levels. The nonlinear combination of the SIM with MF gives possibility to combine local and global topology of the structure and demonstrates high correlation with MCS (r=0.77). The combination of the FEM and SIM on the local level describes redistribution of the mechanical stresses inside the different topological components and shows that the plate-like parts of the trabecular structures are the most important load bearing elements of the cancellous bone
