Stress-based femur fracture risk evaluation from bone densitometry

Abstract

Osteoporosis, characterised by a decrease in bone mineral density, is responsible for millions of fractures. The reference test for this disease is bone densitometry. The diagnosis, based on statistical parameters obtained from an X-ray image, evaluates the patient’s risk of fracture. Their results are not accurate enough, since about 40% of patients with a low fracture risk diagnosis end up suffering from an osteoporotic fracture. Therefore, it seems reasonable to look for a technique that allows diagnoses of greater accuracy. The authors have developed an analysis technique, called the Cartesian Grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM), based on the use of Cartesian meshes, that allows the generation of Finite Element (FE) models directly from medical images. This method has been adapted to obtain an indication of the stress distribution on the femur that enriches the information available to evaluate the risk of osteoporotic failure. The multidisciplinary collaboration of this work has allowed analysing densitometries from a large set of patients. The preliminary results obtained show that it will be able to improve the evaluation of the risk of fracture in femurs due to osteoporosis.