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Improving broadband ultrasound attenuation assessment in cancellous bone by mitigating the influence of cortical bone: Phantom and in-vitro study
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Improving broadband ultrasound attenuation assessment in cancellous bone by mitigating the influence of cortical bone: Phantom and in-vitro study

Yuriy Tasinkevych, Katarzyna Falińska, Peter A Lewin and Jerzy Litniewski
Ultrasonics, v 94, pp 382-390
Apr 2019
PMID: 30001852

Abstract

Trabecular bone Broadband ultrasound attenuation Correction of influence of cortical bone
•Trabecular bone attenuation is determined using reflected echoes. •Impact of cortical bone on cancellous bone attenuation is corrected. •Two-fold reduction in the relative error of BUA assessment is found in experiments. The purpose of this work was to present a new approach that allows the influence of cortical bone on noninvasive measurement of broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA) to be corrected. The method, implemented here at 1 MHz makes use of backscattered signal and once refined and clinically confirmed, it would offer an alternative to ionizing radiation based methods, such as DEXA (Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry), quantitative computed tomography (QCT), radiographic absorptiometry (RA) or single X-ray absorptiometry (SXA), which are clinically approved for assessment of progress of osteoporosis. In addition, as the method employs reflected waves, it might substantially enhance the applicability of BUA - from being suitable to peripheral bones only it would extend this applicability to include such embedded bones as hip and femoral neck. The proposed approach allows the cortical layer parameters used for correction and the corrected value and parameter of the cancellous bone (BUA) to be determined simultaneously from the single (pulse-echo) bone backscattered wave; to the best of the authors’ knowledge such approach was not previously reported. The validity of the method was tested using acoustic data obtained from a custom-designed bone-mimicking phantom and a calf femur. The relative error of the attenuation coefficient assessment was determined to be 3.9% and 4.7% for the bone phantom and calf bone specimens, respectively. When the cortical shell influence was not taken into account the corresponding errors were considerably higher 8.3% (artificial bone) and 9.2% (calf femur). As indicated above, once clinically proven, the use of this BUA measurement technique in reflection mode would augment diagnostic power of the attending physician by permitting to include bones, which are not accessible for transmission mode evaluation, e.g. hip, spine, humerus and femoral neck.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Acoustics
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
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