3D Synchrotron Radiation imaging in bone research: Past works and perspectives

A research scientist in the CREATIS Laboratory and scientific collaborator at the ESRF, Dr Françoise Peyrin leads a team on ‘Tomographic Imaging and Therapy with radiations’. Her research interest includes 3D imaging techniques in X-ray tomography, tomographic image reconstruction, image analysis and wavelet based methods for biomedical applications. In particular, Françoise is developing new methods for the characterization of bone tissue at the microscopic scale.

Her talk on \"3D Synchrotron Radiation imaging in bone research: Past works and perspectives\" will comprise the following.

\"After introducing truly 3D X-ray Computerized Tomography (CT), we shall present the advantages of Synchrotron Radiation (SR) X-ray CT. The 3D SR micro-CT setup developed on beamline ID19 at the ESRF will be described. This system, which can image objects in a large range of energies (8-60 keV) and spatial resolutions (voxel size from 0.17μm – 30 μm) has many applications in various domains. I shall focus on developments motivated by bone research to have a better understanding of bone fragility. Bone has a hierarchical organization covering a large range of scales. At a scale between 5-10μm level, SR micro-CT is well suited to analyze the micro-structure in cancellous and cortical bone. In addition, thanks to the properties of synchrotron radiation, the images provide simultaneously the quantification of the degree of mineralization of bone which is fundamental parameter to assess bone remodeling. These properties will be illustrated by various studies on human or animal bone. The capability of imaging bone micro-structural in-vivo on a mice model was also demonstrated. We shall then describe work in progress to analyze bone at the ultra-structural level. At the micrometer or sub-micrometer scale it is possible to assess osteocyte lacunae, bone micro-cracks and possibly the three-dimensional organization of the canalicular system. Finally the exploitation of phase contrast imaging in bone research will also be briefly introduced. This motivated the development of a regularized phase retrieval approach adapted to hard samples with first applications in bone tissue engineering.\"

Synchrotron Radiation Micro-CT images of human vertebral bone sample from micro structure (left : voxel size : 6.7 μm) to ultrastructure (right : voxel size : 1.4μm) [Peyrin F, Osteoporos Int (2009) 20:1057–106]

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