Analysis of the cortical bone thickness of human thorax based on multi-scale imaging techniques

摘要

The purpose of this study was to develop a new protocol for the geometric analysis of the human thorax with an accurate precision. In medical imaging, voxel size resolution is not precise enough to detect the real cortical thickness. Nevertheless, global data coming from this technique are essential for positioning each rib in the thorax and to describe the anthropometry of the subject. jjlCT scan is the optimal method to detect the cortical thickness of the rib and to differentiate the border between cortical and spongy bones. The |xCT model of the entire rib brings other geometrical properties such as the section area evolution, cortical bone ratio or porosity measurement on trabecular zone. This accurate reconstruction gives information of inertia along the rib. The gap between analysis plans is a parametric value that can be adjusted in order to improve the accuracy of cortical bone thickness distribution. As expected, first results on one rib show a non-continuous evolution of the average cortical thickness. The analysis of the cortical bone thickness on all the subject's ribs and from other PMHS allows the definition of general variation laws, and it will be developed in a future publication.