Non Destructive Characterization of Cortical Bone Micro-Damage by Nonlinear Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy

Abstract

The objective of the study was to evaluate the ability of a nonlinear ultrasound technique, the so-called nonlinear resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (NRUS) technique, for detecting early microdamage accumulation in cortical bone induced by four-point bending fatigue. Small parallelepiped beam-shaped human cortical bone specimens were subjected to cyclic four-point bending fatigue in several steps. The specimens were prepared to control damage localization during four-point bending fatigue cycling and to unambiguously identify resonant modes for NRUS measurements. NRUS measurements were achieved to follow the evolution of the nonlinear hysteretic elastic behavior during fatigue-induced damage. After each fatigue step, a small number of specimens was removed from the protocol and set apart to quantitatively assess the microcrack number density and length using synchrotron radiation micro-computed tomography (SR-µCT). The results showed a significant effect of damage steps on the nonlinear hysteretic elastic behavior. No significant change in the overall length of microcracks was observed in damaged regions compared to the load-free control regions. Only an increased number of shortest microcracks, those in the lowest quartile, was noticed. This was suggestive of newly formed microcracks during the early phases of damage accumulation. The variation of nonlinear hysteretic elastic behavior was significantly correlated to the variation of the density of short microcracks. Our results suggest that the nonlinear hysteretic elastic behavior is sensitive to early bone microdamage. Therefore NRUS technique can be used to monitor fatigue microdamage progression in in vitro experiments.

Decoupling Nonclassical Nonlinear Behavior of Elastic Wave Types

“…This result could lead to further understanding of the nonlinear mechanical phenomena that arise in natural systems as well as to the design and engineering of nonlinear acoustic metamaterials. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.115501 Nonlinear mesoscopic elastic materials [1] exhibit unique and interesting properties related to nonlinear and nonequilibrium dynamics that are relevant to various natural and industrial processes ranging in scales and applications, e.g., the onset of earthquakes and avalanches in geophysics [2][3][4], the aging of infrastructures in civil engineering [5,6], the failure of mechanical parts in industrial settings [7][8][9], bone fragility in the medical field [10][11][12], or the design of novel materials, including nonlinear metamaterials, for shock absorption, acoustic focusing, and energy-harversting systems [13]. These properties include the dependence of wave speed and damping parameters on strain amplitude [5,14,15], slow relaxation [16,17], and hysteresis with end-point memory [18][19][20].…”

Pre-clinical Characterization of Tissue Engineering Constructs for Bone and Cartilage Regeneration

“…US is another diagnostic technique that has been used to non-invasively evaluate integrity of subchondral bone, 54 tissue calcification, 96 fluid content within the joint, 124 synovial integrity, 124 integrity of the cartilage-bone interface, 106 cartilage surface roughness, 126 cartilage thickness, 126 and cartilage disease state. 52 US utilizes externally transmitted sound waves at a frequency of 2–15 MHz to generate structural and functional images in real-time from the mismatch in acoustic impedance in different living tissues.…”

Quantification of nonlinear elasticity for the evaluation of submillimeter crack length in cortical bone

“…Histomorphometry is the gold standard, although providing only 2-D damage characterization (Lee et al, 2003;O'Brien et al, 2007O'Brien et al, , 2002. New techniques are emerging, such as synchrotron radiation microcomputed tomography (SR-mCT) (Haupert et al, 2014;Larrue et al, 2011;Voide et al, 2009). However, none of these invasive techniques can be applied in vivo, nor is able to assess damage in a large bone volume.…”

“…Nonlinear acoustics methods have been introduced recently for the investigation of bone microdamage. They include nonlinear resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (NRUS) (Haupert et al, 2014;Muller et al, 2008), nonlinear wave modulation spectroscopy (NWMS) (Ulrich et al, 2007) and dynamic acousto-elastic testing (DAET) (Moreschi et al, 2011;Renaud et al, 2008). These approaches, directly inspired from nonlinear elastic wave spectroscopy (NEWS) methods developed in the field of nondestructive testing of materials, have been reported to be sensitive to fatigueinduced damage in materials such as concrete (Antonaci et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2010;Van den Abeele and De Visscher, 2000), metals (Cantrell, 2006;Cantrell and Yost, 2001;Frouin et al, 1999;Kim et al, 2006Kim et al, , 2004Nagy, 1998;Sagar et al, 2011;Zagrai et al, 2008) or composites (Aymerich and Staszewski, 2010;Bentahar and El Guerjouma, 2009;Meo et al, 2008;Van den Abeele et al, 2009, 2001b.…”

“…However, so far, few studies have attempted to quantify microdamage, using nonlinear acoustic methods ( Moreschi et al, 2011;Van den Abeele et al, 2009, 2001a. Haupert et al (2014) have investigated the relationship between the nonlinear elastic behavior measured by NRUS and fatigue-induced microdamage of cortical bone specimens, taking advantage of micrometer resolution imaging by SR-mCT. With this approach, the study evidenced a significant correlation between the variation of bone microcrack density and the variation of nonlinear elasticity.…”