Abstract #1949

Efficient Mechanical Bone Parameter Estimation on the Basis of Grayscale Magnetic Resonance Images

Jeremy F. Magland¹, Chamith Rajapakse¹, X H. Zhang², X E. Guo², Felix W. Wehrli¹

¹Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA; ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

While structural trabecular bone parameters combined with bone volume fraction (BV/TV) can be used to predict bone strength beyond that predicted by BV/TV alone, a more direct assessment of strength on the basis of MR images may be found using micro-finite element (FE) modeling. A custom FE solver, specifically optimized for this application, was implemented in pure C++ and used to estimate mechanical bone parameters on the basis of grayscale images at in-vivo resolution. The algorithm was applied to -MR images as well as to -CT images downsampled to various resolutions. The results demonstrate the value of retaining grayscale information in the FE computation.