Hilbert-Huang Transform Based Photoacoustic Signal Analysis for Bone Assessment

Osteoporosis is a systemic bone disease that is prone to fractures due to low bone mass and destruction of the bone microstructure, resulting in increased bone fragility. Photoacoustic (PA) technology has the potential to characterize organic and non-organic tissues in bone that are highly associated with bone health. Since the complex and irregular distribution of trabeculae in bone tissue, the PA signal generated from bone tissue is time-varying and non-stationary, which is difficult to be analyzed in the time domain only. However, most of traditional signal processing methods are not effective for non-stationary signal. In this study, a novel method based on Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and time-frequency analyze was applied for PA signal analyze. Through numerical simulation, we explored the feasibility of the HHT-based PA signal analysis method for bone health assessment. The results indicate that HHT-based methods can distinguish the bone with different bone microstructure and bone mineral density.