A Longitudinal Low Dose μCT Analysis of Bone Healing in Mice: A Pilot Study.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25431676.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1155/2014/791539 and PMC identifier 4241339.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Low dose microcomputed tomography (μCT) is a recently matured technique that enables the study of longitudinal bone healing and the testing of experimental treatments for bone repair. This imaging technique has been used for studying craniofacial repair in mice but not in an orthopedic context. This is mainly due to the size of the defects (approximately 1.0 mm) in long bone, which heal rapidly and may thus negatively impact the assessment of the effectiveness of experimental treatments. We developed a longitudinal low dose μCT scan analysis method combined with a new image segmentation and extraction software using Hounsfield unit (HU) scores to quantitatively monitor bone healing in small femoral cortical defects in live mice. We were able to reproducibly quantify bone healing longitudinally over time with three observers. We used high speed intramedullary reaming to prolong healing in order to circumvent the rapid healing typical of small defects. Bone healing prolongation combined with μCT imaging to study small bone defects in live mice thus shows potential as a promising tool for future preclinical research on bone healing.