“…The morphological and mechanical properties of trabecular bone cores have been extensively studied, using both finite element modelling (Eswaran et al, 2007a;Follet et al, 2007;Harrison et al, 2008;Homminga et al, 2003Homminga et al, , 2001Keaveny et al, 1994;Liebschner et al, 2005;Muller and Ruegsegger, 1995;Nazarian et al, 2006;Niebur et al, 2000;Verhulp et al, 2008;Yeni and Fyhrie, 2001) and experimental testing techniques (Arthur Moore and Gibson, 2002;Hulme et al, 2007;Keaveny, 1997;Nagaraja et al, 2005;Ohman et al, 2007;Perilli et al, 2008;Sran et al, 2007;Thomsen et al, 2002a), with the ultimate goal of improving fracture risk prediction. However, for vertebral bone it is widely acknowledged that the cortical shell also provides an important contribution to the load bearing ability of the whole bone (Andresen et al, 1998;Ito et al, 2002) and finite element studies have indicated that there is a mechanical interaction between the shell and the trabecular core which enhances the overall strength and stiffness properties of the whole vertebra Eswaran et al, 2007b).…”