Comparison Insight Bone Measurements by Histomorphometry and μCT

Abstract

Morphometric analysis of 70 bone biopsies was done in parallel by µCT and histomorphometry. µCT provided higher results for trabecular thickness and separation because of the 3D shape of these anatomical objects.Introduction: Bone histomorphometry is used to explore the various metabolic bone diseases. The technique is done on microscopic 2D sections, and several methods have been proposed to extrapolate 2D measurements to the 3D dimension. X-ray CT is a recently developed imaging tool to appreciate 3D architecture. Recently the use of 2D histomorphometric measurements have been shown to provide discordant results compared with 3D values obtained directly. Material and Methods: Seventy human bone biopsies were removed from patients presenting with metabolic bone diseases. Complete bone biopsies were examined by CT. Bone volume (BV/TV), Tb.Th, and Tb.Sp were measured on the 3D models. Tb.Th and Tb.Sp were measured by a method based on the sphere algorithm. In addition, six images were resliced and transferred to an image analyzer: bone volume and trabecular characteristics were measured after thresholding of the images. Bone cores were embedded undecalcified; histological sections were prepared and measured by routine histomorphometric methods providing another set of values for bone volume and trabecular characteristics. Comparison between the different methods was done by using regression analysis, Bland-Altman, Passing-Bablock, and Mountain plots. Results: Correlations between all parameters were highly significant, but CT overestimated bone volume. The osteoid volume had no influence in this series. Overestimation may have been caused by a double threshold used in CT, giving trabecular boundaries less well defined than on histological sections. Correlations between Tb.Th and Tb.Sp values obtained by 3D or 2D measurements were lower, and 3D analysis always overestimated thickness by ∼50%. These increases could be attributed to the 3D shape of the object because the number of nodes and the size of the marrow cavities were correlated with 3D values. Conclusion:In clinical practice, CT seems to be an interesting method providing reliable morphometric results in less time than conventional histomorphometry. The correlation coefficient is not sufficient to study the agreement between techniques in histomorphometry. The architectural descriptors are influenced by the algorithms used in 3D.

The effect of erythropoietin on bone

“…These data highly threaten the internal validity and hence the external validity and generalizability of histomorphometric data in general. Nonetheless, it has been shown that correlation of the bone structural measurements between µCT and histomorphometry is very good, and even excellent when estimating bone volume to tissue volume (Müller et al 1998;Chappard et al 2005;Thomsen et al 2005). The latter was the primary outcome measurement in Paper 3.…”

High Resolution 3D Imaging of <em>Ex-Vivo</em> Biological Samples by Micro CT

“…The final resolution is 8 microns. A careful analysis of the volume rendering shown in Fig.1, shows that the bone volume fraction (the fraction of the bone volume that is occupied by mineralized tissue) is 0.18, and the bone mineral density is 723 mg/cm 3 . Those values allow us to compare this structure with bones in other stages of development.…”

“…This technique requires only few hours of measurement as compared to weeks in histology. In addition, μCT does not rely on 2D stereologic models, thus it may complement and in some cases can even replace histological methods 3,4 , which are both time consuming and destructive. Sample conditioning and positioning in μCT is straightforward and does not require high vacuum or low temperatures, which may adversely affect the structure.…”

MicroCT-based evaluation of the trabecular bone quality of different implant anchorage sites for masticatory rehabilitation of the maxilla

“…Both, histology and microCT, represent standard techniques for bone quality evaluation. However, the data are not interchangeably comparable, and microCT analysis tends to overestimate the bone volume fraction and trabecular structure (Chappard et al, 2005;Bonnet et al, 2009).…”

“…For zygomatic bone, studies on its quantity are available (Uchida et al, 2001;Nkenke et al, 2003;Van Steenberghe et al, 2003;Corvello et al, 2011;Balshi et al, 2012), but data on its quality are still scarce and, except for one histological study by Nkenke et al (2003), are restricted to Japanese populations (Kato et al, 2004(Kato et al, , 2005Yoshino et al, 2007). Possible differences due to ethnicity (Uchida et al, 2001;Nkenke et al, 2003;Liu et al, 2011;Kim et al, 2013b;Putman et al, 2013) and the technique applied for bone analysis (histomorphometry vs. micro-computed tomography (microCT)) (Chappard et al, 2005;Bonnet et al, 2009), and the lack of an intraindividual comparison with the maxilla, triggered the present microCT-based study to assess the trabecular bone quality of the zygomatic bone and compare it with the anterior and posterior maxilla.…”