Quantitatively Structuring A Trabecular Network Using Computational Geometry Techniques

Osteoporosis or ‘porous bones’ is the major cause of bone fracture in elderly post-menopausal women. As such, predicting fracture occurrence can significantly reduce the associated morbidity and reduce health-care expenditures. Examining local micro-structure of trabecular bone is becoming increasingly important for investigating bone fracture behavior. Conventional voxel based measures of bone architecture cannot provide morphology information regarding the fractures occurring at individual trabeculae. In this paper, the Delaunay triangulation, a computational geometry technique is used for assessing the effect of trabeculae structure on local micro-fracture, from sequential 2D images of the cross section of a hamster femur surface undergone a multistage loading until fracture occurrence. The most significant structural parameters to characterizethe strength of cancellous bone and the change in morphology of individual trabeculae during the fracture process are investigated. The results from different regions were compared to describe the possible architectural factors affecting the local micro-damages.