DETECTION OF FATIGUE MICRODAMAGE IN WHOLE RAT FEMORA USING CONTRAST-ENHANCED MICRO-COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY

摘要

Microdamage in bone tissue results from repetitive mechanical loading, and the accumulation of microdamage has been implicated with increased fracture susceptibility, including stress fractures in active individuals and fragility fractures in the elderly [1-3]. Conventional methods used to detect microdamage in bone are limited to thin histological sections, which are inherently invasive, destructive, tedious and two-dimensional [3]. A non-destructive, three-dimensional (3-D) method would enable correlation of the spatial location and accumulation of microdamage with variations in the mechanical loading and morphology of whole bones.