Three-dimensional bone microarchitecture assessment of human jaw bone using cone beam CT

Abstract

1. Objective The purpose of this study was to define the potential usability of cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) in the assessment of trabecular bone microarchitecture.

2. Materials and Methods Sixty eight cylindrical bone specimens were prepared from 4 pairs of 4 human jaw bone. The specimens were scanned using both micro-CT and CBCT. The voxel sizes of micro-CT and CBCT were 19.37 μm and 100 μm, respectively. With micro-CT, additional reconstruction images with 96.87 μm voxel size were acquired to simulate the CBCT images of 100 μm voxel size. Three-dimensional (3D) morphometric analysis was performed in each set of images and the morphometric parameters were calculated. The correlation of parameters between the micro-CT and the CBCT was evaluated using the linear correlation test. 3. Results The bone volume (BV), percent bone volume (BV/TV), trabecular separation (Tb.Sp), and degree of anisotropy (DA) of CBCT images showed strong correlations (Pearson correlation coefficient, r > 0.5) with those of micro-CT with 19.37 μm voxel size (P <0.05). Although some parameters such as bone surface (BS), bone surface density (BS/TV), trabecular bone pattern factor (Tb.Pf), structural model index (SMI), and trabecular number (Tb.N) showed relatively weak correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient, r < 0.5), still, they showed statistically significant linear correlation (P < 0.05). Among the 3D morphometric parameters, DA showed the strongest correlation between CBCT and micro-CT with 19.37 μm voxel. The parameters showing linear correlation between CBCT and micro-CT with 19.37 μm voxel were consistent with those between CBCT and micro-CT with 96.87 μm.

4. Conclusion Most morphometric parameters from CBCT were correlated with those of micro-CT. Parameters showing strong correlation such as BV, BV/TV, Tb.Sp, and DA would be used to evaluate the bone quality using CBCT.