Ultrasonic evaluation of bone quality in cadaver ilia

Several imaging modalities have traditionally been utilized to assess bone health. However, none of these standards is capable of providing a clear rendition or display of the damaged bone layers caused, for instance, by osteoporosis. This study examines the use of ultrasound for non-invasive monitoring of bone quality in bone samples with various degrees of porosity. A user-defined region of interest (ROI) in the iliac portion of extracted human cadaver coxal bones is monitored and quantified. Raster C-scan images of the ROI were acquired and compared to basic physical measurements, and to bone scans using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). A quantitative measure of the superficial sub-surface composite matrix (ScM) content was analyzed using linear regression with all physical and DXA measures. The trend in the degree of percent bone loss (PBL) measured by ultrasound (US) was found to be closely paralleled with that measured by DXA (R(2) = 0.82, p < .0005). Also, the trend in which PBL (US) correlated with bone mineral density (BMD) (R(2) = 0.62, p < .01) was found to exhibit a similar behavior when the latter was compared to dry mass density (DmD) of the bone samples (R(2) = 0.63, p < .01). However, when PBL (DXA) was compared to DmD, it did reveal a better linearity (R(2) = 0.69, p < .005) than the one obtained when PBL (US) was compared with the same DmD (R(2) = 0.45, p < .05). A similar outcome was observed when PBL (US) was compared with percent porosity (R(2) = 0.51, p < .05), as opposed to the better linearity exhibited between PBL (DXA) and porosity (R(2) = 0.86, p < .0005). Despite these slight variations, further analyses on the statistical significance between these correlations suggest that ultrasound can be an effective imaging technique in assessing the degree of bone damage, and can be used to assess the structural integrity of bones.