Background: Osteoporosis is a highly prevalent multifactorial osteometabolic disease, classically diagnosed, in vivo, by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). This study evaluated osteoporosis, ex vivo, using vibro-acoustography (VA), an elastographic technique based on ultrasound radiation force.
Methods: Three groups of mice femurs were used: (I) control group (CG), (II) osteoporosis group (OG) and (III) treated osteoporosis group (TOG), in which the animals received pamidronate, an antiresorptive drug. Evaluation was performed in an acoustic tank, using two high frequency focused beams produced by a confocal ultrasonic transducer. A hydrophone registered the low frequency acoustic response (AR) of bone samples. We used micro-computed tomography (microCT) as the reference standard and evaluated the correlation between VA and microCT parameters.
Results: The spectral analyses of the ARs with estimated area under the curve (AUC) values (mean; st. dev.) were, respectively, 1.29e-07 and 9.32e-08 for the CG, 3.25e-08 and 2.16e-08 for the OG, and 1.50e-07 and 8.37e-08 for the TOG. VA differentiated the experimental groups (P<0.01) and the results were reproducible [interclass correlation coefficient (ICC): 0.43 (95% CI: 0.15-0.71)]. There was also a statistically significant association between VA and microCT connectivity (Conn.) (r=0.80; P<0.01) and connectivity density (Conn. D) (r=0.76; P<0.01).
Conclusions: These results encourage further studies aimed at evaluating the potential use of VA for the diagnosis of osteoporosis as a relatively low-cost and radiation-free alternative to DXA.
Keywords: Vibro-acoustography (VA); mice; micro-computed tomography (microCT); osteoporosis; ultrasound.
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