Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 25, 2026
Cortical Bone Assessment Using Ultrasonic Guided Waves: A Reproducibility Study in a Healthy Population
Published on: January 31, 2025
Clinical Conformity Between Heel Ultrasound and Densitometry in Postmenopausal Women: A Systematic Review
Elżbieta Tabor1, Wojciech Pluskiewicz2, Kamil Tabor1
1School of Medicine, Division of Dentistry, Doctoral Studies, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.
Objectives:
To assess the conformity between heel ultrasound and densitometry, and the clinical application of densitometry T-score "gold standard" in quantitative ultrasound as a method of osteoporosis diagnosis in postmenopausal women.
Methods:
The study is a systematic review of studies published in the last 17 years in PubMed, NLM Gateway, Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Library. Calcaneal quantitative ultrasound sensitivity and specificity were analyzed with regard to densitometry measurements in postmenopausal women. In addition, we summarized the values of ultrasound T-scores, for which their accuracy in osteoporosis diagnosis is the highest.
Results:
The inclusion criteria met 15 research studies conducted on postmenopausal women. In 11 of them, the authors concluded that clinical conformity between heel ultrasound and densitometry is good. The recommended quantitative ultrasound T-score for osteoporosis diagnosis ranged between -1 and -3.65.
Conclusions:
Heel ultrasound should be considered to be as accurate as densitometry in diagnosing osteoporosis. Nevertheless, it needs to have separate T-score ranges determined, because those used in densitometry are not adequate.
