UvA - DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Spatial orientation in bone samples and Young ' s modulus

Bone mass is the most important determinant of the mechanical strength of bones and spatial structure is the second. In general the spatial structure and mechanical properties of bones such as the breaking strength are directional dependent. The Mean Intercept Length (MIL) and Line Frequency Deviation (LFD) are two methods for quantifying directional aspects of the spatial structure of bone. The Young's modulus is commonly used to describe the stiffness of bone which is also a directional dependent mechanical property. The aim of this article is to investigate the relation between MIL and LFD on one hand and the Young's modulus on the other. From 11 human mandibular condyles 44 samples were taken and scanned with high resolution computer tomography equipment (micro-CT). For each sample the MIL and LFD were determined in 72602 directions distributed evenly in 3D space. In the same directions the Young's modulus was determined by means of the stiffness tensor that had been determined for each sample by finite element analysis. To investigate the relation between the MIL and LFD on one hand and the Young's modulus on the other multiple regression was used. On average the MIL accounted for 69% of the variance in the Young's modulus in the 44 samples and the LFD accounted for 72%. The average percentage of variance accounted for increased to 80% when the MIL was combined with the LFD to predict the Young's modulus. Obviously MIL and LFD to some extent are complementary with respect to predicting the Young's modulus. It is known that directional plots of the MIL tend to be ellipses or ellipsoids. It is speculated that ellipsoids are not always sufficient to describe the Young's modulus of a bone sample and that the LFD partly compensates for this.