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Dual modality neutron and x-ray tomography for enhanced image analysis of the bone-metal interface

Törnquist, Elin LU ; Le Cann, Sophie LU ; Tudisco, Erika LU orcid ; Tengattini, Alessandro ; And, Edward ; Lenoir, Nicolas ; Hektor, Johan LU ; Raina, Deepak Bushan LU ; Tägil, Magnus LU and Hall, Stephen A. LU , et al. (2021) In Physics in Medicine and Biology 66(13).
Abstract

The bone tissue formed at the contact interface with metallic implants, particularly its 3D microstructure, plays a pivotal role for the structural integrity of implant fixation. X-ray tomography is the classical imaging technique used for accessing microstructural information from bone tissue. However, neutron tomography has shown promise for visualising the immediate bone-metal implant interface, something which is highly challenging with x-rays due to large differences in attenuation between metal and biological tissue causing image artefacts. To highlight and explore the complementary nature of neutron and x-ray tomography, proximal rat tibiae with titanium-based implants were imaged with both modalities. The two techniques were... (More)

The bone tissue formed at the contact interface with metallic implants, particularly its 3D microstructure, plays a pivotal role for the structural integrity of implant fixation. X-ray tomography is the classical imaging technique used for accessing microstructural information from bone tissue. However, neutron tomography has shown promise for visualising the immediate bone-metal implant interface, something which is highly challenging with x-rays due to large differences in attenuation between metal and biological tissue causing image artefacts. To highlight and explore the complementary nature of neutron and x-ray tomography, proximal rat tibiae with titanium-based implants were imaged with both modalities. The two techniques were compared in terms of visualisation of different material phases and by comparing the properties of the individual images, such as the contrast-to-noise ratio. After superimposing the images using a dedicated image registration algorithm, the complementarity was further investigated via analysis of the dual modality histogram, joining the neutron and x-ray data. From these joint histograms, peaks with well-defined grey value intervals corresponding to the different material phases observed in the specimens were identified and compared. The results highlight differences in how neutrons and x-rays interact with biological tissues and metallic implants, as well as the benefits of combining both modalities. Future refinement of the joint histogram analysis could improve the segmentation of structures and tissues, and yield novel information about specimen-specific properties such as moisture content.

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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
dual-mode tomography, image registration, joint histogram, phase segmentation, rat tibia
in
Physics in Medicine and Biology
volume
66
issue
13
article number
135016
pages
13 pages
publisher
IOP Publishing
external identifiers
  • scopus:85111180989
  • pmid:34010812
ISSN
0031-9155
DOI
10.1088/1361-6560/ac02d4
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Funding Information: This research was funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) within the Swedish national graduate school in neutron scattering (SwedNess, GSn15-0008). The authors want to acknowledge the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France for providing the beamtime at the NeXT-Grenoble beamline (doi:10.5291/ILL-DATA.UGA-31). This work was supported in part by The Centre for Quantification of Imaging Data from MAXIV (QIM) project at Lund University, and resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) atLUNARC (projects 2020/6-90 and 2020/11-30). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
id
db906646-4fc0-49b9-b67c-0ea28d74bbac
date added to LUP
2021-08-31 10:40:38
date last changed
2024-07-13 17:45:53
@article{db906646-4fc0-49b9-b67c-0ea28d74bbac,
  abstract     = {{<p>The bone tissue formed at the contact interface with metallic implants, particularly its 3D microstructure, plays a pivotal role for the structural integrity of implant fixation. X-ray tomography is the classical imaging technique used for accessing microstructural information from bone tissue. However, neutron tomography has shown promise for visualising the immediate bone-metal implant interface, something which is highly challenging with x-rays due to large differences in attenuation between metal and biological tissue causing image artefacts. To highlight and explore the complementary nature of neutron and x-ray tomography, proximal rat tibiae with titanium-based implants were imaged with both modalities. The two techniques were compared in terms of visualisation of different material phases and by comparing the properties of the individual images, such as the contrast-to-noise ratio. After superimposing the images using a dedicated image registration algorithm, the complementarity was further investigated via analysis of the dual modality histogram, joining the neutron and x-ray data. From these joint histograms, peaks with well-defined grey value intervals corresponding to the different material phases observed in the specimens were identified and compared. The results highlight differences in how neutrons and x-rays interact with biological tissues and metallic implants, as well as the benefits of combining both modalities. Future refinement of the joint histogram analysis could improve the segmentation of structures and tissues, and yield novel information about specimen-specific properties such as moisture content. </p>}},
  author       = {{Törnquist, Elin and Le Cann, Sophie and Tudisco, Erika and Tengattini, Alessandro and And, Edward and Lenoir, Nicolas and Hektor, Johan and Raina, Deepak Bushan and Tägil, Magnus and Hall, Stephen A. and Isaksson, Hanna}},
  issn         = {{0031-9155}},
  keywords     = {{dual-mode tomography; image registration; joint histogram; phase segmentation; rat tibia}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{07}},
  number       = {{13}},
  publisher    = {{IOP Publishing}},
  series       = {{Physics in Medicine and Biology}},
  title        = {{Dual modality neutron and x-ray tomography for enhanced image analysis of the bone-metal interface}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-6560/ac02d4}},
  doi          = {{10.1088/1361-6560/ac02d4}},
  volume       = {{66}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}