Elastic Anisotropy of Trabecular Bone in the Elderly Human Vertebra.
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ABSTRACT: Knowledge of the nature of the elastic symmetry of trabecular bone is fundamental to the study of bone adaptation and failure. Previous studies have classified human vertebral trabecular bone as orthotropic or transversely isotropic but have typically obtained samples from only selected regions of the centrum. In this study, the elastic symmetry of human vertebral trabecular bone was characterized using microfinite element (?FE) analyses performed on 1019 cubic regions of side length equal to 5 mm, obtained via thorough sampling of the centrums of 18 human L1 vertebrae (age?=?81.17?±?7.7?yr; eight males and ten females). An optimization procedure was used to find the closest orthotropic representation of the resulting stiffness tensor for each cube. The orthotropic elastic constants and orientation of the principal elastic axes were then recorded for each cube and were compared to the constants predicted from Cowin's fabric-based constitutive model (Cowin, 1985, "The Relationship Between the Elasticity Tensor and the Fabric Tensor," Mech. Mater., 4(2), pp. 137-147.) and the orientation of the principal axes of the fabric tensor, respectively. Deviations from orthotropy were quantified by the "orthotropic error" (van Rietbergen et al., 1996, "Direct Mechanics Assessment of Elastic Symmetries and Properties of Trabecular Bone Architecture," J. Biomech., 29(12), pp. 1653-1657), and deviations from transverse isotropy were determined by statistical comparison of the secondary and tertiary elastic moduli. The orthotropic error was greater than 50% for nearly half of the cubes, and the secondary and tertiary moduli differed from one another (p?
SUBMITTER: Unnikrishnan GU
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4844108 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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