T. Hildebrand et al., Direct three-dimensional morphometric analysis of human cancellous bone: Microstructural data from spine, femur, iliac crest, and calcaneus, J BONE MIN, 14(7), 1999, pp. 1167-1174
The appearance of cancellous bone architecture is different for various ske
letal sites and various disease states. During aging and disease, plates ar
e perforated and connecting rods are dissolved. There is a continuous shift
from one structural type to the other. So traditional histomorphometric pr
ocedures, which are based on a fixed model type, will lead to questionable
results. The introduction of three-dimensional (3D) measuring techniques in
bone research makes it possible to capture the actual architecture of canc
ellous bone without assumptions of the structure type. This requires, howev
er, new methods that make direct use of the 3D information. Within the fram
ework of a BIOMED I project of the European Union, we analyzed a total of 2
60 human bone biopsies taken from five different skeletal sites (femoral he
ad, vertebral bodies L2 and L4, iliac crest, and calcaneus) from 52 donors.
The samples were measured three-dimensionally with a microcomputed tomogra
phy scanner and subsequently evaluated with both traditional indirect histo
morphometric methods and newly developed direct ones. The results show sign
ificant differences between the methods and in their relation to the bone v
olume fraction. Based on the direct 3D analysis of human bone biopsies, it
appears that samples with a lower bone mass are primarily characterized by
a smaller plate-to-rod ratio, and to a lesser extent by thinner trabecular
elements.