부산대학교 도서관

Changes in bone density (amount of bone per unit tissue volume) in cancellous bone due to the onset of osteoporosis and subsequent treatment are well documented. Anecdotally, the trabecular structure changes too but these changes have been difficult to characterise due to the irregular shape of trabeculae. Here, a method for extracting information about the 3D structure of bone by computing a collection of best-fitting ellipsoids is proposed and evaluated on micro-computed tomography scans of tibiae of 30 growing rats. The best proportion of correct assignments was~$\mu=0.6993,\sigma = 0.0140,n=30.$ The results show that there are quantifiable differences in the structure between three experimental groups, and as a function of distance from the epiphyseal growth plate. The method is an improvement on previous attempts to classify trabecular structure.