Influence of vertical trabeculae on the compressive strength of the human vertebra

Abstract

Vertebral strength, a key etiologic factor of osteoporotic fracture, may be affected by the relative amount of vertically oriented trabeculae. To better understand this issue, we performed experimental compression testing, high-resolution micro-computed tomography (ÂμCT), and micro-finite-element analysis on 16 elderly human thoracic ninth (T9) whole vertebral bodies (ages 77.5±10.1 years). Individual trabeculae segmentation of the ÂμCT images was used to classify the trabeculae by their orientation. We found that the bone volume fraction (BV/TV) of just the vertical trabeculae accounted for substantially more of the observed variation in measured vertebral strength than did the bone volume fraction of all trabeculae (r2=0.83 versus 0.59, p