How do the effective bone properties evolve during normal and pathological calcification?
Résumé
Numerous diseases are associated with (or due to) a pathologic calcification of the skeleton. It may involve a defect in calcification (as in bone in osteoporotic patients) or on the contrary, an excess of calcification, or even the appearance of calcification in a normally non-calcified tissue. Understanding the effect of calcification on skeletal tissue properties is therefore a milestone to propose preventive or therapeutic strategies. In vitro studies involving murine models with normal or pathologic calcification have been used (Leroux-Berger et al. 2011) but results are generally limited to histological observations. In addition to such observations, mechanical testing may give an access to the macroscopic mechanical response of small skeletal samples and permit comparative studies, but does not provide with a characterization of local tissue properties. Alternatively, various studies (Laurent et al. 2016) have emphasized that Computed Tomography (CT) may be used to predict overall bone stiffness using subject-specific Finite Element (FE) models. FE models may then be used to identify bone properties using an inverse method, based on experimental biomechanical data, in order to identify bone properties. However, in the case of non-calcified tissue, the geometries issued from CT may be insufficient, and completed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (Singh et al. 2018) in order to characterize immature bone or fibrocartilage. In this study, combined CT-MRI imaging are used to characterize normal and pathologic calcification, and then enables to build subject-specific FE models of murine femurs to identify corresponding skeletal tissue properties.