Fracture healing valuation using X-ray microtomography

Abstract

X-ray microtomography (uCT) provides quantitative and three dimensional measurements of the callus structure and these measurements could potentially be related to callus strength. The assessment of bone repair through new methodologies has important application in animal investigations regarding invasive or non invasive technologies for the stimulation of bone healing. The aim of this investigation was the use of μCT for the assessment of bone repair in a rat femur bone defect. Thirty male Wistar rats weighting about 300g were divided in three experimental groups with 10 animals on each group. The animals were anesthetized and a circular hole with a 1.2mm diameter was generated at the medial region of the left femur using a dental drill. At the 7th, 14th and 21st day after surgery the animals of experimental groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively, were sacrificed and the left femur excised. The femurs were wrapped in gauze immersed in phosphate-buffered solution and stored in a plastic bag at -20oC until the analysis by microtomograph. The femurs were scanned by the 1172 microtomograph (SkyScan, Belgium). The softwares NRecon, Dataviewer, CT-Analyzer and CT-Vol, provided by the microtomograph manufacture, were used for the following assessments: a) visual examination of the femurs microtomographic reconstructions using transversal, coronal and sagittal sections; b) segmentation of the bone callus in the reconstructions using an image processing algorithm to quantify the parameters total bone callus volume (TV), volume of the mineralized bone callus (BV), the ratio BV/TV and the volumetric bone callus mineral density (BMD); c) 3D rendering of the bone callus. The statistical analysis of the measured parameters was performed by the Student t test with a level of significance p < 0.05. There was a statistically significant increase in the mean values of the parameters BV/TV and BMD in the comparison of experimental groups 1 and 2. The comparison between groups 2 and 3 was not statistically significant. Results are according to bone physiology data from literature although the image processing algorithm used needs some adjustments to get better results in bone callus segmentation in ROI