Mechanical stability of trabecular bone morphology as a measure for osteoporosis

A new technique for assessing the mechanical stability of trabecular bone was introduced. This technique uses a full three dimensional reconstruction of a trabecular bone specimen and a finite element model to calculate the local stress distribution within the trabeculae. A little bone was artificially removed in the model at highly loaded locations and the changed stress distributions were determined. The changes in these distributions ale indicative for the mechanical stability (change in fracture risk) of the trabecular architecture with respect to small changes in mass. We propose that this method can be used to measure the mechanical efficacy of a trabecular architecture in terms of fracture risk, thereby defining osteoporosis in a quantitative way.