In vivo micro-CT imaging and microarchitectural analysis.
During the last decades, great progresses in imaging techniques have been achieved allowing us to monitor bone microarchitectural changes in vivo in a non-invasive manner and in vitro with high accuracy.
Micro-CT imaging technique is one of the key research tools at our laboratory. The key person at the laboratory has 15 years’ experience in using the micro-CT imaging techniques in vivo and in vitro with special know-how and has 30 articles published in the international peer-review journals. We have currently high speed in vivo micro-CT scanner (vivaCT 40) from ScancoMedical AG, Switzerland (http://www.scanco.ch/). The highest nominal isotropic resolution is 10 µm; image matrix ranges 512x512, 1024x1024 or 2048x2048 Pixels; and specimen size varies from 20 to 38 mm and scan length 145 mm. We have complete microarchitectural analysis software and Finite element analysis software (Figure).
This non-invasive assessing microarchitecture of bone or biomaterial using micro-CT generally applicable in vivo as pre-clinical tools for assessment of bone diseases or quantify microarchitecture of biomaterial. VivaCT is applicable both in vivo in small animals such as mouse and rat, and in vitro for animal sample and human bone biopsy as well.
With this advanced imaging tool, we have in vivo monitored fracture repair, and in vitro quantify microarchitecture of bone, biomaterials, metal implant bone interphase etc.
Figure: Micro-CT scanner and 3-D reconstruction of human cancellous bone
Human cancellous bone specimen was micro-CT scanned. After segmentation of micro-CT images by applying accurate optimal threshold, 3-D reconstruction was made. From 3-D micro-CT imaging datasets, microarchitectural parameters were computed based on true, unbiased, assumption-free 3-D methods.
