The bone mineral density (BMD) is the gold standard test for the diagnosis of osteoporosis. Nevertheless, it is known that only this measurement is not sufficient to completely identify bone fragility and the consequent risk of fracture, becoming necessary the investigation of the bone structure. OBJECTIVES: Evaluate if the Euler-Poincaré characteristic (EPC) for the analysis of the connectivity of the trabecular bone could supply an additional support in identifying the deterioration of the bone structure. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A group of images forming dissectors were analyzed, obtained from the computerized tomography of the lumbar vertebrae, from which the Euler-Poincarè characteristic (EPC) was estimated. To deal with the processing of images of the dissectors, a computer program was developed using the GTK+ for MS-Windows. The results were compared to the BMD. RESULTS: It was verified that the measurement of the EPC is correlated with the results obtained by means of the BMD for the lumbar vertebrae. It was also demonstrated that the area of connectivity of the trabecular that is propagated over the dissectors corroborates to ensure that the results of the EPC are consistent with the BMD measurement. CONCLUSIONS: The application of ECP in the analysis of the vertebral tomographies could constitute a method to evaluate the trabecular bone structure, and its correlation with the mechanical resistance of the bone, however being necessary more studies to confirm this data.
bone microarchitecture; osteoporosis; Euler-Poincaré characteristic; trabecular connectivity; medical image processing; tomographic images
