Cambridge: New imaging technology for diagnosing osteoporosis

Cambridge Enterprise is looking for licensees for a new technology for identifying which bones have a high risk of fracture, and for monitoring the effectiveness of osteoporosis treatments.

The method, developed by Graham Treece of the Department of Engineering and Ken Poole of the Department of Medicine, uses Computed Tomography (CT) imaging to accurately measure the thickness of the cortical bone, the hard outer layer of compact bone which surrounds the spongy trabecular bone. The thickness of cortical bone is a key indicator of the risk of fracture.

This is expected to lead to advances in the treatment and management of osteoporosis, a condition that results in a decline in bone strength and thinning of the cortical bone.

Currently, the main means of assessing the risk of fracture is a bone mineral density test, which uses dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry to estimate mineral levels contained in bone.

Another method, multi-detector computed tomography, which provides more comprehensive 3D imaging of bone structure, but not at sufficient resolution to provide accurate sub-millimetre measurement.

The method developed by Treece and Poole increases the accuracy of cortical bone measurements to the extent that clinicians can map changes in thickness over time, and produces accurate measurements of thicknesses as low as 0.3 mm.

Using data from a CT scan and a mathematical model of the scanning process, thousands of cortical bone measurements are obtained. This produces a 3D thickness map, which allows the identification of areas that are dangerously thin. Successive imaging allows maps to be produced depicting changes in the cortical bone over time in all areas of the skeleton so that the progress of osteoporosis treatments can be monitored.

“Osteoporosis is a condition which will become more and more common as the population ages,” said Andrew Walsh of Cambridge Enterprise, the university’s commercialisation group. “This [...] has the potential to improve the treatment of patients suffering from osteoporosis as well as to support the development of new drugs.”