TY - JOUR
T1 - Correlative study of liquid in human bone by 3D neutron microscopy and lab-based X-ray μCT
AU - Østergaard, Maja
AU - Naver, Estrid Buhl
AU - Schüpbach, Delia
AU - Kaestner, Anders
AU - Strobl, Markus
AU - Brüel, Annemarie
AU - Thomsen, Jesper Skovhus
AU - Schmidt, Søren
AU - Poulsen, Henning Friis
AU - Kuhn, Luise Theil
AU - Birkedal, Henrik
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)
PY - 2023/10
Y1 - 2023/10
N2 - Liquid plays an important role in bone that has a complex 3D hierarchical pore structure. However, liquid (water) is difficult to discern from e.g. an organic matrix by X-ray imaging. Therefore, we use a correlative approach using both high resolution X-ray and neutron imaging. Human femoral bone with liquid adsorbed into some of the pores was imaged with both the Neutron Microscope at the ICON beamline, SINQ at PSI, and by lab-based μCT using 2.7 μm voxel size. Segmentation of the two datasets showed that, even though the liquid was clearly distinguishable in the neutron data and not in the X-ray data, it remained challenging to segment it from bone due to overlaps of peaks in the gray level histograms. In consequence, segmentations from X-ray and neutron data varied significantly. To address this issue, the segmented X-ray porosities was overlaid on the neutron data, making it possible to localize the liquid in the vascular porosities of the bone sample and use the neutron attenuation to identify it as H2O. The contrast in the neutron images was lowered slightly between the bone and the liquid compared to the bone and the air. This correlative study shows that the complementary use of X-rays and neutrons is very favorable, since H2O is very distinct in the neutron data, while D2O, H2O, and organic matter can barely be distinguished from air in the X-ray data.
AB - Liquid plays an important role in bone that has a complex 3D hierarchical pore structure. However, liquid (water) is difficult to discern from e.g. an organic matrix by X-ray imaging. Therefore, we use a correlative approach using both high resolution X-ray and neutron imaging. Human femoral bone with liquid adsorbed into some of the pores was imaged with both the Neutron Microscope at the ICON beamline, SINQ at PSI, and by lab-based μCT using 2.7 μm voxel size. Segmentation of the two datasets showed that, even though the liquid was clearly distinguishable in the neutron data and not in the X-ray data, it remained challenging to segment it from bone due to overlaps of peaks in the gray level histograms. In consequence, segmentations from X-ray and neutron data varied significantly. To address this issue, the segmented X-ray porosities was overlaid on the neutron data, making it possible to localize the liquid in the vascular porosities of the bone sample and use the neutron attenuation to identify it as H2O. The contrast in the neutron images was lowered slightly between the bone and the liquid compared to the bone and the air. This correlative study shows that the complementary use of X-rays and neutrons is very favorable, since H2O is very distinct in the neutron data, while D2O, H2O, and organic matter can barely be distinguished from air in the X-ray data.
KW - Bone vasculature
KW - Imaging
KW - Neutron microscopy
KW - Tomography
KW - X-ray microscopy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85164999311&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.bone.2023.116837
DO - 10.1016/j.bone.2023.116837
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 37419297
AN - SCOPUS:85164999311
SN - 8756-3282
VL - 175
JO - Bone
JF - Bone
M1 - 116837
ER -