A novel phantom for accurate performance assessment of bone mineral measurement techniques: DEXA and QCT

Abstract

accurate performance assessment of bone mineral densitometry is crucial due to the fact a high level of exact estimation of bone situation is needed for correct diagnosis of patient with bone disease. Variation of parameters like sensitivity and percentage error which highly affect the densitometry results may induce some level of uncertainty in diagnosis procedure. So, determination of this variation and designing an algorithm for correction is necessary to assure examiners about measurement results. In this study some phantoms consisting of soft tissue- and bone-equivalent material was devised to accurately test bone densitometry systems. It should be noted that there is no unique phantom to be able to use for simulations evaluation of both DEXA and QCT, this is the main background of this study which aim to design a completed phantom. Four inserts in spine phantom with precisely wide range of K2HPO4 simulate trabecular bone, and provide the basis for the accurately check of bone densitometry systems. It has shown, although a linear correlation between measured and true density can be observed but, there is a variation in sensitivity and percentage error when density of spine changes. To correct and stabilize the sensitivity variation, an analytical algorithm is proposed. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.