Ultra-Short Echo-Time (UTE) Imaging Based Estimation of Cortical Bone Stiffness

Chamith S. Rajapakse¹, Hamidreza Saligheh Rad¹, Shing Chun Benny Lam¹, James Love¹, Jeremy F. Magland¹, Felix W. Wehrli¹

It is well known that intracortical remodeling occurs resulting in increased porosity with advancing age and impaired strength. UTE MRI now offers the potential to estimate true bone tissue fraction as 1-BWF where BWF is bone water fraction. Here, we investigated the feasibility of estimating cortical bone stiffness in healthy volunteers using micro-finite-element analysis on the basis of BWF maps derived from UTE imaging. The preliminary results suggest that the incorporation of BWF to the FE analysis can enhance the assessment of mechanical competence of cortical bone in vivo compared to the mechanical and structural measures derived from conventional imaging.