Three-Dimensional Digital Topological Characterization of Cancellous Bone Architecture

摘要

Cancellous bone consists of a network of bony struts and plates that provide mechanical strength to much of the skeleton at minimum weight. It has been shown that loss in bone mass is accom- panied by architectural changes that relate to both scale and topology of the network. In this paper, the concept of three-dimensional (3D) digital topology is presented for characterizing the local topology of each bone voxel after skeletonization of the binary bone images. This method allows us to identify each voxel as belonging to a surface, curve, or junction structure in the trabecular bone network.