Bone regeneration assessment by optical coherence tomography and MicroCT synchrotron radiation

Abstract

Bone grafting is a commonly performed surgical procedure to augment bone regeneration in a variety of orthopaedic and maxillofacial procedures, with autologous bone being considered as the “gold standard” bone-grafting material, as it combines all properties required in a bone-graft material: osteoinduction (bone morphogenetic proteins – BMPs - and other growth factors), osteogenesis (osteoprogenitor cells) and osteoconduction (scaffold). The problematic elements of bone regenerative materials are represented by their quality control methods, the adjustment of the initial bone regenerative material, the monitoring (noninvasive, if possible) during their osteoconduction and osteointegration period and biomedical evaluation of the new regenerated bone. One of the research directions was the interface investigation of the regenerative bone materials and their behavior at different time periods on the normal femoral rat bone. 12 rat femurs were used for this investigation. In each ones a 1 mm diameter hole were drilled and a bone grafting material was inserted in the artificial defect. The femurs were removed after one, three and six months. The defects repaired by bone grafting material were evaluated by optical coherence tomography working in Time Domain Mode at 1300 nm. Three dimensional reconstructions of the interfaces were generated. The validations of the results were evaluated by microCT. Synchrotron Radiation allows achieving high spatial resolution images to be generated with high signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, Synchrotron Radiation allows acquisition of volumes at different energies and volume subtraction to enhance contrast. Evaluation of the bone grafting material/bone interface with noninvasive methods such as optical coherence tomography could act as a valuable procedure that can be use in the future in the usual clinical techniques. The results were confirmed by microCT. Optical coherence tomography can be performed in vivo and can provide a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the bone augmentation procedure.