Direct three-dimensional morphometric analysis of human cancellous bone: Microstructural data from spine, femur, iliac crest, and calcaneus

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.