Two-wave propagation imaging to evaluate the structure of cancellous bone

Abstract

The two-wave phenomenon reflects not only bone mass but also the complex bone structure of cancellous bone. We propose a new simple imaging technique based on the two-wave phenomenon for investigating the anisotropic structure of cancellous bone. A cylindrical specimen of cancellous bone was obtained from a bovine femur. The structure (alignment of trabeculae) of the specimen was obtained from 3-D X-ray micro computed tomography imaging. Using a conventional ultrasonic pulse technique, we rotated the receiver around the specimen to investigate the ultrasonic fields after propagation within the specimen. The ultrasonic propagation image clearly showed the effect of the bone structure. We found that the fast wave showed apparent refraction, whereas the slow wave did not. Fast-wave propagation imaging is thus a simple and convenient technique for easy interpretation of the anisotropic structure. This imaging technique has the potential to become a powerful tool to investigate the structure of trabeculae during in vivo measurements.

Photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging of cancellous bone tissue

“…13,14 Other methods based on the measurement of two waves or ultrasound (US) backscattering have also been proposed. [15][16][17] US backscattering from bone depends on the mechanical properties and the microstructure of the interrogated hard tissue, 17 which render it a good measure of bone health. US backscattering is normally represented by parameters such as backscatter coefficient, 18,19 broadband ultrasound backscatter (BUB), 20,21 integrated reflection coefficient, 22 and apparent integrated backscatter (AIB).…”

The relationship between ultrasonic backscatter and trabecular anisotropic microstructure in cancellous bone

“…25 The same cylindrical bone sample was used for the through transmission measurements. Unlike the conventional measurement, the receiver was rotated from À30 to 30 and two-dimensional imaging of the ultrasound field was performed.…”

“…In the through-transmission measurement, the two-wave phenomenon would be more obvious when ultrasound propagates along the MTA orientation, and only a single slow wave would be observed in the case that ultrasound propagates perpendicular to the MTA orientation. [25][26][27] While for the ultrasonic backscatter measurement, the ultrasonic waves usually propagate perpendicular to the MTA orientation in order to obtain large backscatter signals. The backscatter signals would be much smaller when the ultrasound waves propagate along the MTA orientation.…”

Nonlinear attenuation and dispersion in human calcaneus in vitro: Statistical validation and relationships to microarchitecture

“…Other models, including two-longitudinal-wave models (some based on Biot theory) (Hosokawa andOtani, 1997, 1998;Nicholson et al, 1998;Kaczmarek et al, 2002;Lee et al, 2003;Cardoso et al, 2003Cardoso et al, , 2008Fellah et al, 2004Fellah et al, , 2008Marutyan et al, 2006;Lee et al, 2007;Sebaa et al, 2008;Pakula et al, 2008;Anderson et al, 2008;Bauer et al, 2008;Mizuno et al, 2009), the stratified model (Hughes et al, 1999;Wear, 2001b;Lin et al, 2001), and multiple scattering models (Ha€ ıat et al, 2008a) are also valuable for developing intuition regarding the interaction between ultrasound and bone. Two-wave models might be more appropriate than single-wave models when there is clear evidence of two waves, for example (1) in bovine bone (Hosokawa and Otani, 1997;Waters and Hoffmeister, 2005;Nagatani et al, 2008;Nelson et al, 2011;Yamashita et al, 2012;Hosokawa, 2013;Wear et al, 2014) and/or (2) in human bone when propagation is parallel to the predominant trabecular orientation (Ha€ ıat et al, 2008b;Mizuno et al, 2009).…”