TEXTURE ANALYSIS IN QUANTITATIVE OSTEOPOROSIS ASSESSMENT: CHARACTERIZING MICROARCHITECTURE

The microarchitecture of the trabecular bone is an highly informative feature for osteoporosis assessment. High resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography permits its in-vivo observation at a resolution of 82 mu m. In this paper we propose an approach that assesses bone microarchitecture based on texture features extracted from the trabecular bone. The method is based on three-dimensional texture features as local descriptors of the structure in the trabecular bone. A clustering in the feature space indicates characteristic classes of microarchitecture that are repeatedly detected across subjects. The distribution of those classes allows for a differentiation between osteoporotic and healthy subjects. We report initial results for the repeatability of the method and its performance for the differentiation of healthy and osteoporotic subjects.