Clinical Evaluation of Bone Strength and Fracture Risk

Abstract

Purpose of review: This paper seeks to evaluate and compare recent advances in the clinical assessment of the changes in bone mechanical properties that take place as a result of osteoporosis and other metabolic bone diseases and their treatments.

Recent findings: In addition to the standard of DXA-based areal bone mineral density (aBMD), a variety of methods, including imaging-based structural measurements, finite element analysis (FEA)-based techniques, and alternate methods including ultrasound, bone biopsy, reference point indentation, and statistical shape and density modeling, have been developed which allow for reliable prediction of bone strength and fracture risk. These methods have also shown promise in the evaluation of treatment-induced changes in bone mechanical properties. Continued technological advances allowing for increasingly high-resolution imaging with low radiation dose, together with the expanding adoption of DXA-based predictions of bone structure and mechanics, as well as the increasing awareness of the importance of bone material properties in determining whole-bone mechanics, lead us to anticipate substantial future advances in this field.

Keywords: Bone material properties; Bone microstructure; Bone strength; Clinical imaging; Finite element analysis; Fracture; Osteoporosis.