Mechanical testing combined with imaging — ASN Events
  1. Schedule
  2. Pre-conference satellite meeting - Bone quality: what is it and how do we measure it?
  3. Mechanical testing combined with imaging

Mechanical testing combined with imaging (#11)

Egon Perilli 1
  1. The Medical Device Research Institute, School of Computer Science, Engineering & Mathematics, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

To experimentally investigate the link between bone microarchitecture and bone mechanics in three dimensions, bone is typically first examined with non-destructive high resolution imaging methods, such as micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), then mechanically tested. The challenge is to perform both on the whole limb, to gather micro-meter level details for the entire organ and concomitantly understanding its mechanical behaviour under load. However, the first published studies were limited to excised bone biopsies, cubes or cylinders with small dimensions (10 mm side). Nowadays, imaging systems are available, capable of scanning large specimens up to entire bone segments, by maintaining the high spatial resolution (20-30 μm/voxel range). The potential is big, also due to increased computer resources available today compared to previously, to process these data.

Research studies will be presented, including from our group, linking human bone microarchitecture and mechanics up to the entire limb: an osteoporosis study, using time-elapsed compression testing up to fracture, of human cadaver femurs with concomitant imaging performed at the Australian Synchrotron [1]; an osteoarthritis study, where gait mechanics measured in-vivo on patients is linked to subregional variations in bone microarchitecture measured in their entire excised tibial plateau [2].

Research findings which were limited to bone biopsies in the past and hence could not account for the interaction of cortical and trabecular bone microarchitecture in explaining bone mechanics, will be revised or confirmed at the whole-organ level in the near future, with micro-meter detail. These can be used for better explaining bone mechanical behaviour including fracture initiation and for building/validating computational models at an unprecedented level. Furthermore, high-resolution imaging in-vivo on patients, such as high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT 61-82 μm/voxel), may be used to study the above relationships in pathological and non-pathological bone in-vivo on patients in future.

  1. Martelli S, Perilli E. Proceedings, 22nd Annual Meeting, European Society of Biomechanics, Lyon, France, OS23-4, 2016
  2. Roberts BC, Thewlis D, Solomon L, Mercer H, Reynolds KJ, Perilli E. J Orthop Res. in press, 2016.