Bone Abstracts

New treatment agents against osteoporosis may not only lead to an improved trabecular structure, but can probably also strengthen the cortex. To assess this treatment effects by means of QCT, one has to deal with significant partial volume effects observing this very thin, but compact structure. A new method for cortical thickness estimation has been developed using an analytical deconvolution approach. After estimating the point-spread-function (PSF) of a scanner/kernel combi...

Although the fracture risk reduction under bisphosphonate treatment in osteoporosis is clinically well established, it remains understudied why the efficacy of bisphosphonate therapy is higher for the prevention of vertebral fractures compared to other fractures.Our aim was to investigate whether anti-resorptive therapy with alendronate would result in different regional variations of structural indices in the vertebral body. We investigated the microstr...

Bone mineral density (BMD) as measured by quantitative computed tomography (QCT) is biased by the variable marrow composition since marrow fat reduces the apparent BMD. We developed a marrow densitometry (MD) method that identifies subvolumes in the vertebrae that consist of bone marrow only (bone voids) and determines their average mineral equivalent density values. The method was developed for use with in vivo high resolution QCT (HR-QCT). HR-QCT still has limited s...

Bone remodeling is the key process in bone structural reorganization, and its alterations lead to changes in bone mechanical strength. Since osteons reflect different bone remodeling patterns, we hypothesize that the femoral cortex of females with miscellaneous age, disease, and treatment conditions will display distinct osteonal morphology and osteocyte lacunar numbers along with different mechanical properties.The specimens used in this study were coll...