PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF AN X-RAY IMAGING SYSTEM FOR THE BONE STRUCTURAL INDEX EVALUATION

Osteoporosis (OP) is a very common disease in which the bones become weak and are more likely to break. Despite the huge costs in the EU and worldwide, the majority of individuals who have sustained an osteoporosis-related fracture or who are at high risk of fracture are left untreated. In effect, OP is a silent disease, with bones deteriorating without warning until fracture, and the current screening modalities are not significantly better than age alone, also because they consider only the bone quantity (bone mineral density, BMD) and the clinical risk factors, but disregard the bone quality, that is the structural soundness of the trabecular arrangement, which can be evaluated by simulations on virtual models. While 3D models can only be used in research because of high costs, an alternative approach based on the acquisition of planar hand radiograms for bone behaviour simulations, and the use of a Structural Index, SI, for bone quality ranking, have been developed at the University of Trieste. In this work, we discuss the preliminary design of a portable low dose X-ray hand scanner to be used as a low cost, user-friendly device (Fig.1) for imaging the trabecular pattern in the proximal phalanges of the non-dominant hand and for providing a radiogram suitable for the SI evaluation.