Abstract

BackgroundStudying mechanical properties of canine trabecular bone is important for a better understanding of fracture mechanics or bone disorders and is also needed for numerical simulation of canine femora. No detailed data about elastic moduli and degrees of anisotropy of canine femoral trabecular bone has been published so far, hence the purpose of this study was to measure the elastic modulus of trabecular bone in canine femoral heads by ultrasound testing and to assess whether assuming isotropy of the cancellous bone in femoral heads in dogs is a valid simplification.MethodsFrom 8 euthanized dogs, both femora were obtained and cubic specimens were cut from the centre of the femoral head which were oriented along the main pressure and tension trajectories. The specimens were tested using a 100 MHz ultrasound transducer in all three orthogonal directions. The directional elastic moduli of trabecular bone tissue and degrees of anisotropy were calculated.ResultsThe elastic modulus along principal bone trajectories was found to be 11.2 GPa ± 0.4, 10.5 ± 2.1 GPa and 10.5 ± 1.8 GPa, respectively. The mean density of the specimens was 1.40 ± 0.09 g/cm3. The degrees of anisotropy revealed a significant inverse relationship with specimen densities. No significant differences were found between the elastic moduli in x, y and z directions, suggesting an effective isotropy of trabecular bone tissue in canine femoral heads.DiscussionThis study presents detailed data about elastic moduli of trabecular bone tissue obtained from canine femoral heads. Limitations of the study are the relatively small number of animals investigated and the measurement of whole specimen densities instead of trabecular bone densities which might lead to an underestimation of Young's moduli. Publications on elastic moduli of trabecular bone tissue present results that are similar to our data.ConclusionThis study provides data about directional elastic moduli and degrees of anisotropy of canine femoral head trabecular bone and might be useful for biomechanical modeling of proximal canine femora.

Highlights

  • Studying mechanical properties of canine trabecular bone is important for a better understanding of fracture mechanics or bone disorders and is needed for numerical simulation of canine femora

  • No significant differences were found between the elastic moduli in x, y and z directions, suggesting an effective isotropy of trabecular bone tissue in canine femoral heads

  • This study presents detailed data about elastic moduli of trabecular bone tissue obtained from canine femoral heads

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Summary

Introduction

Studying mechanical properties of canine trabecular bone is important for a better understanding of fracture mechanics or bone disorders and is needed for numerical simulation of canine femora. Some studies have investigated canine bone [13,14,15,16,17,18,19], but to our knowledge no publication has presented any details about directional elastic moduli of canine femoral heads including degrees of anisotropy. Neither is it clear whether assuming isotropy on the tissue level is a justified simplification for trabecular bone in canine femoral heads as Kabel et al.[9] reported in a study of whale bone specimens. We calculated degrees of anisotropy and used statistical testing in order to estimate whether assuming isotropy of the trabecular tissue might be a valid simplification

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