A Microstructural Analysis of the Mechanical Behavior of Cortical Bone Through Histology and Image Processing

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Abstract

The interplay between mechanical and biological phenomena in bone, coupled with the significance of bone health to quality of life makes bone a uniquely interesting material. Studying the mechanical behavior of bone allows for a better understanding of how biological processes, such as remodeling, influence functional behavior. The increasing efficiency of computational methods and technology make computational modeling an attractive method for investigating the mechanical behavior of bone.

The goal of this work is to utilize a histological procedure for the imaging of cortical bone and develop an image processing procedure in order to perform an automated segmentation of osteons and Haversian canals from cortical bone images. A morphological and mechanical analysis are then performed using the data obtained from the images to investigate both the cortical microstructure and the efficacy of the developed image processing procedure.

A methenamine-silver nitrate stain is used to demarcate the cement lines in order to more clearly identify osteonal boundaries. This procedure is beneficial regardless of the segmentation procedure utilized as it allows for superior visualization of the cortical microstructure over other staining procedures, but is particularly beneficial for automated segmentation.

The image processing procedure developed in this work utilizes a combination of image processing techniques, including thresholding, Canny edge detection, and watershed image segmentation. The combination of these methods allows for the automated segmentation of osteons in a given image. An optimization approach is taken to maximize the quality of the segmentation by finding optimal parameters for the image processing methods used in the procedure.

Morphological parameters of cortical bone are assessed in order to identify trends that exist in different regions and ages of human tibias and compared to similar studies in the literature. A phase field damage model is utilized in order to examine the differences between manual segmentation, automated segmentation, and the elliptical approximations commonly made in computation models of the cortical microstructure. The damage analysis further reveals how variations in the cortical microstructure influence the mechanical behavior of bone.

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Cited By (1)

Year	Entry
2021	Maghami E, Josephson TO, Moore JP, Rezaee T, Freeman TA, Karim L, Najafi AR. Fracture behavior of human cortical bone: role of advanced glycation end-products and microstructural features. J Biomech. August 26, 2021;125:110600.