Analyze 14.0

Visualization and Analysis Software for Medical Imaging

BMA: Bone Microarchitecture Analysis Add-On

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Bone Microarchitecture Analysis for MicroCT Data

The Bone Micro Analysis (BMA) module is available as an add-on for Analyze. BMA is a powerful pre-clinical research application designed for the evaluation of microCT data. The module provides the ability to process bone specimens and isolate 3D samples of cortical bone, trabecular bone and trabecular tissue. It generates an extensive set of bone measurements as described by Bouxsein et al.
BMA provides automatic and user-guided isolation of bone from non-bone tissue and identification of both cortical and trabecular bone. The module uses the segmented regions to automatically drive the calculation of common bone measurements that provide a quantitative description of bone microarchitecture. The specific measurements for trabecular and cortical bone made by the BMA module are listed below.

Bone Microarchitecture Analysis Workflow

Preprocessing

The BMA add-on module requires that bone specimens are isovolumetric. If the image data contains multiple bones the bone of interest must be isolated and orientated into the correct anatomical orientation. All tools needed for data preprocessing are provided with Analyze.arrow-down

preprocessing

Cortical Bone Segmentation

Once the image data is loaded the BMA add-on will conduct a preliminary segmentation which will allow the module to identify the cortical shell, cortical pores and trabecular tissue regions.arrow-down

cortical_segmentation

Trabecular Bone Segmentation

Upon user approval the add-on will now complete the segmentation process by identifying the trabecular bone in the trabecular region. Two new regions, the trabecular bone and intra-trabecular space will be derived.arrow-down

trabecular_segmentation

Calculate Bone Measurements

Measurements are automatically calculated for the trabecular and cortical bone and output in several comma-separated value (.csv) files. A utility is also provided to convert CT numbers (HUs) to Bone Mineral Density (BMD) in units of mg/CC.

measure_bone

Table 1. Trabecular Bone Measurements

AbbreviationDescriptionUnit
TVTotal Volumemm3
BVBone Volumemm3
BSBone Surfacemm2
BV/TVBone Volume Fraction%
BS/TVBone Surface Densitymm2/mm3
BS/BVSpecific Bone Surfacemm2/mm3
Conn.DConnectivity Density1/mm3
SMIStructure Model Index
Tb.NTrabecular Number1/mm
Tb.ThTrabecular Thicknessmm
Tb.SpTrabecular Separationmm
Tb.Th.SDStandard Deviation of Trabecular Thicknessmm
Tb.Sp/SDStandard Deviation of Trabecular Seperationmm
DADegree of Anisotropy
MILMean Intercept Length

Table 2. Cortical Bone Measurements

AbbreviationDescriptionUnit
Tt.ArTotal Cross-Sectional Areamm2
Ct.ArCortical Bone Areamm2
Ma.ArMedullary Areamm2
Ct.Ar/Tt.ArCortical Area Fraction%
Ct.ThAverage Cortical Thicknessmm
Ps.PmPeriosteal perimetermm
Ec.PmEndocortical Perimetermm
IapMoment of Inertia Anteroposterior Axismm4
ImlMoment of Inertia Mediolateral Axismm4
ImaxMaximum Moment of Inertiamm4
IminMinimum Moment of Inertiamm4
JPolar Moment of Inertiamm4
Ct.PoCortical Porosity%
Po.NPore Numbern
Po.VTotal Pore Volumemm3
AvgPo.VAverage Pore Volumemm3
Po.V.SDStandard Deviation of Pore Volumemm3
Po.DnPore Density1/mm3

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