A Bone Sample Containing a Bone Graft Substitute Analyzed by Correlating Density Information Obtained by X-ray Micro Tomography with Compositional Information Obtained by Raman Microscopy

Abstract

The ability of bone graft substitutes to promote new bone formation has been increasingly used in the medical field to repair skeletal defects or to replace missing bone in a broad range of applications in dentistry and orthopedics. A common way to assess such materials is via micro computed tomography (mu-CT), through the density information content provided by the absorption of X-rays. Information on the chemical composition of a material can be obtained via Raman spectroscopy. By investigating a bone sample from miniature pigs containing the bone graft substitute Bio Oss((R)), we pursued the target of assessing to what extent the density information gained by mu-CT imaging matches the chemical information content provided by Raman spectroscopic imaging. Raman images and Raman correlation maps of the investigated sample were used in order to generate a Raman based segmented image by means of an agglomerative, hierarchical cluster analysis. The resulting segments, showing chemically related areas, were subsequently compared with the mu-CT image by means of a one-way ANOVA. We found out that to a certain extent typical gray-level values (and the related histograms) in the mu-CT image can be reliably related to specific segments within the image resulting from the cluster analysis.

Keywords

X-ray micro computed tomography; Raman spectroscopy; bone; Bio-Oss((R)); cluster analysis; image segmentation

Published in

Materials
2015, volume: 8, number: 7, pages: 3831-3853
Publisher: MDPI AG

SLU Authors

• Wernersson, Erik

  • Centre for Image Analysis, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Medical Imaging
Medical Laboratory Technologies

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ma8073831

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/75590