Morphological and structural evaluation of trabecular bone in early and late stage of osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease that occurs mostly in the knee and in the hip. It is expected that more than 20% of the population over the age of 60 in Europe and in the United States will show signs and symptoms associated with OA, and that one-third of OA patients will experience disability and immobilization, hence the motivation for this research aimed at achieving new insights into the bone structure alterations induced by this disease. In an original approach, the 3D reconstructions obtained by high-resolution X-ray micro-CT were the starting point for: i) a morphological examination and 2) structural 3D analyses by numerical simulation of the bone architectures behavior, thus providing an extended description of the changes in osteoarthritic bone as disease progress. This paper presents the first results obtained by the combination of morphological and structural 3D analyses from on high-resolution micro-CT reconstructions of trabecular bone in early and late stage hip OA.