Abstract
In this paper we presenta methodology to performelasticity analyses of trabecular bone fromhuman wrist micro CT scans, with the final purpose of providing datawhich can be used, together with other measures, to develop new diagnostic tools to improve the characterisation of bone quality and its structural behaviour.This analysis is carried out by using a version of the Cartesian grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) for medical images. As inimage based methods, which assign one element to each voxel, cgFEM takes advantage of the fact that both the mesh and the image have compatible Cartesian structures in order to create the FE modelfrom the image, in an automatic way, without any intermediate step. In contrast to the image based methods, cgFEM can keep the number of degrees of freedom relatively low, by using an efficient h-adaptive process to adapt the mesh to the heterogeneity of the image.H-adaptivity allows cgFEM to capture the borders of the bodies represented in the medical images without the necessity of creatingthem explicitly as in the usual geometry based methods. As a consequence,it does not require the cumbersome, often manual, process of creatingintermediate geometrical modelsfrom the bitmap which areusually one of the most expensive stages in patient specific simulations.Here, in particular, we show results of trabecular bone overall stiffness tensor evaluation obtained by using cgFEM in a homogenisation procedure.
