Functional microimaging: a hierarchical investigation of bone failure behavior

Voide, Romain, van Lenthe, G. Harry, Stauber, Martin, Schneider, Philipp, Thurner, Philipp J., Wyss, Peter, Stampanoni, Marco and Müller, Ralph (2008) Functional microimaging: a hierarchical investigation of bone failure behavior. Journal of the Japanese Society of Bone Morphometry, 18, 9-21.

Abstract

Biomechanical testing is the gold standard to determine bone competence, and has been used extensively. Direct mechanical testing provides detailed information on overall bone mechanical and material properties, but fails in revealing local properties such as local deformations and strains and does not permit quantification of fracture progression. Therefore, we incorporated several imaging methods in our mechanical setups to get a better insight into bone deformation and failure characteristics on various levels of structural organization. Our aim was to develop an integrative approach for hierarchical investigation of bone, working at different scales of resolution ranging from the whole bone to its ultrastructure. Inbred strains of mice make useful models to study bone properties. In this study, we concentrated on C57BL/6 (B6) and in C3H/He C3H mice, two strains known for their differences in bone phenotype. At the macroscopic level, we used high-resolution and high-speed cameras which allowed to visualize global failure behavior and fracture initiation with high temporal resolution. This image data proved especially important when dealing with small bones such as murine femora. At the microscopic level, bone microstructure, i.e. trabecular architecture and cortical porosity, are known to influence bone strength and failure mechanisms significantly. For this reason, we developed an image-guided failure assessment technique, also referred to as functional microimaging, allowing direct time-lapsed three-dimensional visualization and computation of local displacements and strains for better quantification of fracture initiation and progression. While the resolution of conventional desktop micro-computed tomography is typically around a few micrometers, computer tomography systems based on highly brilliant synchrotron radiation X-ray sources permit to explore the sub-micrometer world. This allowed, for the first time, to uncover fully nondestructively the

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Contributors

Author: Philipp J. Thurner

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