TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantification of 3D microstructural parameters of trabecular bone is affected by the analysis software
AU - Mys, Karen
AU - Varga, Peter
AU - Stockmans, Filip
AU - Gueorguiev, Boyko
AU - Wyers, Caroline E.
AU - van den Bergh, Joop P. W.
AU - van Lenthe, G. Harry
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are not compensated and there are no other institutional subsidies, corporate affiliations, or funding sources supporting this study unless clearly documented and disclosed. This research was supported by a travel grant for a long stay abroad by The Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), and by KU Leuven Internal Funding (Grant C24/16/027). The authors would like to thank Dr. Haniyeh Hemmatian (KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium) for assistance with the microCT-scans and Ursula Eberli (AO Research Institute Davos, Davos, Switzerland) for assistance with the IPL software.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Over the last decades, the use of high-resolution imaging systems to assess bone microstructural parameters has grown immensely. Yet, no standard defining the quantification of these parameters exists. It has been reported that different voxel size and/or segmentation techniques lead to different results. However, the effect of the evaluation software has not been investigated so far. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the bone microstructural parameters obtained with two commonly used commercial software packages, namely IPL (Scanco, Switzerland) and CTan (Bruker, Belgium). We hypothesized that even when starting from the same segmented scans, different software packages will report different results.Nineteen trapezia and nineteen distal radii were scanned at two resolutions (20 mu m voxel size with microCT and HR-pQCT 60 mu m). The scans were segmented using the scanners' default protocol. The segmented images were analyzed twice, once with IPL and once with CTan, to quantify bone volume fraction (BV/TV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th), trabecular separation (Tb.Sp), trabecular number (Tb.N) and specific bone surface (BS/BV).Only small differences between IPL and CTan were found for BV/TV. For Tb.Th, Tb.Sp and BS/BV high correlations (R-2 >= 0.99) were observed between the two software packages, but important relative offsets were observed. For microCT scans, the offsets were relative constant, e.g., around 15% for Tb.Th. However, for the HR-pQCT scans the mean relative offsets ranged over the different bone samples (e.g., for Tb.Th from 14.5% to 19.8%). For Tb.N, poor correlations (0.43We conclude that trabecular bone microstructural parameters obtained with IPL and CTan cannot be directly compared except for BV/TV. For Tb.Th, Tb.Sp and BS/BV, correction factors can be determined, but these depend on both the image voxel size and specific anatomic location. The two software packages did not produce consistent data on Tb.N. The development of a universal standard seems desirable.
AB - Over the last decades, the use of high-resolution imaging systems to assess bone microstructural parameters has grown immensely. Yet, no standard defining the quantification of these parameters exists. It has been reported that different voxel size and/or segmentation techniques lead to different results. However, the effect of the evaluation software has not been investigated so far. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the bone microstructural parameters obtained with two commonly used commercial software packages, namely IPL (Scanco, Switzerland) and CTan (Bruker, Belgium). We hypothesized that even when starting from the same segmented scans, different software packages will report different results.Nineteen trapezia and nineteen distal radii were scanned at two resolutions (20 mu m voxel size with microCT and HR-pQCT 60 mu m). The scans were segmented using the scanners' default protocol. The segmented images were analyzed twice, once with IPL and once with CTan, to quantify bone volume fraction (BV/TV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th), trabecular separation (Tb.Sp), trabecular number (Tb.N) and specific bone surface (BS/BV).Only small differences between IPL and CTan were found for BV/TV. For Tb.Th, Tb.Sp and BS/BV high correlations (R-2 >= 0.99) were observed between the two software packages, but important relative offsets were observed. For microCT scans, the offsets were relative constant, e.g., around 15% for Tb.Th. However, for the HR-pQCT scans the mean relative offsets ranged over the different bone samples (e.g., for Tb.Th from 14.5% to 19.8%). For Tb.N, poor correlations (0.43We conclude that trabecular bone microstructural parameters obtained with IPL and CTan cannot be directly compared except for BV/TV. For Tb.Th, Tb.Sp and BS/BV, correction factors can be determined, but these depend on both the image voxel size and specific anatomic location. The two software packages did not produce consistent data on Tb.N. The development of a universal standard seems desirable.
KW - Quantification
KW - Microstructural parameters
KW - Analysis software
KW - VOXEL SIZE
KW - RESOLUTION
KW - THICKNESS
KW - VOLUME
KW - MODEL
U2 - 10.1016/j.bone.2020.115653
DO - 10.1016/j.bone.2020.115653
M3 - Article
C2 - 33059103
SN - 8756-3282
VL - 142
JO - Bone
JF - Bone
M1 - 115653
ER -