Contact ultrasonic bone analyser

摘要

The author describes the development of a portable system (Contact Ultrasonic Bone Analyser, CUBA) using a direct contact method, in which the transducers are placed against the skin of the subject, either side of any accessible bone. The system collects data in the time-domain. This enables measurements of both velocity and broadband attenuation to be obtained simultaneously. An accurate measurement of bone thickness is obtained by measuring the overlying soft-tissue using an ultrasonic pulse-echo technique. CUBA consists of an IBM PC-compatible portable computer interfaced to a combined spike generator (transmitter) and digital receiver with dedicated menu-driven software.