Objective
With current life expectancy, osteoporosis related fractures are a considerable health care problem. The precise anatomical changes, which lead to diminish bone quality, are unknown. Bone loss occurs with ageing and estrogens deficient subjects and is generally measured by the amount of bone mass, which only partly explains the increased fracture risk. More accurate diagnoses can be made if bone quality is measured by geometry, architecture and matrix tissue properties also. However, these cannot be measured in vivo, yet. The proposed project will use a newly developed micro-CT scanner to follow the architectural changes in the bones of animals as a function of ageing, estrogens deficiency and drug treatment. The mechanical consequences of architectural changes or matrix tissue changes will precisely be determined using computer models and micro mechanical testing, witch will provide new information with respect to aetiology and osteoporosis treatment.
Achievements from objective:
The innovative in-vivo micro-CT scanner designed by Skyscan is marketed now and a number of them has been already sold. Our initiative has received considerable attention by other players in the field. Two other manufacturers have now in-vivo micro-CT scans on the market as well. Recently a discussion list on internet was started by the Erasmus group www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=3DMORPH-L&H=NIC.SURFNET.NL In the third year (2002) most of the animal experiments (plus in-vivo scans) that where pivotal in the project were made. Academic partners have received bones from this experiment I the course of 2002 and 2003 and have performed various experiments with these bones according to the protocols they have set up in the first and second year (2000 & 2001).
Hence, the most important result in the third year was the generation of the in-vivo CT scans, how they could be turned into follow-up data for the individual animals (by registration of the sequential data) and corresponding bone quality data. Currently the academic groups are working on the final deliverables. There is still a vast amount of data-mining to be performed. The academic groups will likely keep working with this data for a few years. In addition some data sets have been made public (downloadable from our web site) and given the amount of requests so far it seems likely that other academic research groups will use parts of our data for further research. Correspondence and some data sharing is done on the website (http://www.mme.tcd.ie/MIAB).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternet
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringdiagnostic imagingcomputed tomography
- natural sciencesmathematicspure mathematicsgeometry
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
3000 DR ROTTERDAM
Netherlands