[A method to evaluate femoral bone mass in rats with CT numbers]

To develop a method of evaluating bone mass with CT numbers (Hounsfield unit, HU), volumetric mean of CT numbers (HUm) was defined to describe bone mass for the study of bone loss caused by microgravity. Ten femurs in the tail-suspended rats experiment were scanned by CT scanner. And the RUm of the intact, proximal, middle and distal femurs were obtained from these CT data. Then regressive analysis was performed between HUm and bone mineral density (BMD) measured by DXA in those regions. When HU threshold is equal to 400, the correlation between BMD and HUm of the intact femur is the best in all cases (R = 0.887, P <0.001), and the correlation between BMD and HUm of the proximal femur (R = 0.833, P <0.01) is better than those of the middle femur (R=0.683, P<0.05) and distal femur (R = 0.744, P<0.05). Volumetric mean of CT numbers has a good linear relationship with BMD; it can accurately describe bone mass and can be used to evaluate the results of the tail-suspended rats experiment.