3D CT Analyses of Porous Structures of Apatite Ceramics and in-vivo Bone Formation

摘要

To evaluate bone formation on porous ceramic baiomaterials, such as hydroxy- apatite (HA) and apatite-wollastonite glass ceramic (AW-GC), a micro-focus X-ray CT method was employed to image and recostruct the 3-dimensional (3-D) structures of the ceramic specimens. The 100 CT cross section images of the specimens, composed of 512 x 512 pixels, formed one solid 3-D CT image of the specimen. The 3-D porous structures of the ceramics were analyzed by usig a bone-analyzing software, which gave the distribution of pore sizes and path sizes between pores for various specimens with different porosities. Some ceramic specimens soaked in simulated body fluid and those implanted in rat for in-vivo tests were investigated. After a few weeks in-vivo experiments, bone formation could be clearly observed and the amount of the formation could be estimated by the CT images.