Vibro-acoustic method for detection of osteopenia and osteoporosis

Abstract

Early detection of osteopenia and osteoporosis is critical in identifying at-risk groups and manage necessary therapy. In this paper, a new noninvasive and quantitative vibro-acoustic method is proposed for detection of osteoporosis and osteopenia. In this method, we excite the bone by an ultrasound radiation force (URF) pulse. The URF pulse induces a vibration in the bone, resulting an acoustic wave that is received by a hydrophone placed on the skin. This prospective study included n = 23 volunteers. The number of volunteers with osteopenia and osteoporosis were 7, 6, respectively, and the number of volunteers with normal bone was 10. URF excitations were applied at four equi-distance points on the bone. The resulting acoustic signals were used for wave velocity estimation based on cross-correlation technique. In general, the hydrophone signal may be modeled as a superposition of different modes of bone vibration. Based on this model, we used variational mode decomposition (VMD) as an efficient technique to decompose the received signal into an ensemble of band-limited intrinsic mode functions. Statistical analysis demonstrates that osteopenia and osteoporosis bones can be differentiated from normal bone with p< 0.001 using Wilcoxon rank-sum test on estimated velocity of the modes with maximum power.Early detection of osteopenia and osteoporosis is critical in identifying at-risk groups and manage necessary therapy. In this paper, a new noninvasive and quantitative vibro-acoustic method is proposed for detection of osteoporosis and osteopenia. In this method, we excite the bone by an ultrasound radiation force (URF) pulse. The URF pulse induces a vibration in the bone, resulting an acoustic wave that is received by a hydrophone placed on the skin. This prospective study included n = 23 volunteers. The number of volunteers with osteopenia and osteoporosis were 7, 6, respectively, and the number of volunteers with normal bone was 10. URF excitations were applied at four equi-distance points on the bone. The resulting acoustic signals were used for wave velocity estimation based on cross-correlation technique. In general, the hydrophone signal may be modeled as a superposition of different modes of bone vibration. Based on this model, we used variational mode decomposition (VMD) as an efficient techniqu...