Gm. Henschel et al., EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF THE VISUALIZATION OF SPONGIOUS BONE BY HIGH-RESOLUTION COMPUTED-TOMOGRAPHY, RoFo. Fortschritte auf dem Gebiete der Rontgenstrahlen und der neuenbildgebenden Verfahren, 162(4), 1995, pp. 269-273
Aim: To show the accuracy and the lower limit of visualisation of canc
ellous bone in high-resolution computed tomography (HR-CT). Methods: 1
8 native human lumbar vertebrae were placed in a water phantom and exa
mined by HR-CT. The scans were compared with contact radiographs of co
rrelating thin bone sections by morphologic criteria. Results and conc
lusion: The measured lower limit of visualisation of cancellous bone s
tructures is clearly worse than expected from the measurements of spat
ial resolution with standard phantoms used for HR-CT (0.6 versus 0.4 m
m). True and exact imaging of normal cancellous bone cannot be achieve
d even by modern HR-CT. Noise creates structures mimicking cancellous
bone.