Kjell Laperre

Development of micro-CT protocols for in vivo follow-up of mouse bone architecture without major radiation side effects

In vivo micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) will offer unique information on the time-related changes in bone mass and structure of living mice, provided that radiation-induced side effects are prevented. Lowering the radiation dose, however, inevitably decreases the image quality. In this study we developed and validated a protocol for in vivo micro-CT imaging of mouse bone architecture that retains high quality images but avoids radiation-induced side effects on bone structure and hematological parameters. The left hindlimb of male C57Bl/6 mice was scanned in vivo at 3 consecutive time points, separated each time by a 2-week interval. Two protocols for in vivo micro-CT imaging were evaluated, with pixel sizes of 9 and 18 μm and administered radiation doses of 434 mGy and 166 mGy per scan, respectively. These radiation doses were found not to influence trabecular or cortical bone architecture in pre-pubertal or adult mice. In addition, there was no evidence for hematological side effects as peripheral blood cell counts and the colony-forming capacity of hematopoietic progenitor cells from bone marrow and spleen were not altered. Although the images obtained with these in vivo micro-CT protocols were more blurred than those obtained with high resolution (5 μm) ex vivo CT imaging, longitudinal follow-up of trabecular bone architecture in an orchidectomy model proved to be feasible using the 9 μm pixel size protocol in combination with a suitable bone segmentation technique (i.e. local thresholding). The image quality of the 18 μm pixel size protocol was too degraded for accurate bone segmentation and the use of this protocol is therefore restricted to monitor marked changes in bone structure such as bone metastatic lesions or fracture healing. In conclusion, we developed two micro-CT protocols which are appropriate for detailed as well as global longitudinal studies of mouse bone architecture and lack noticeable radiation-induced side effects.

The minimal entropy prior for simultaneous reconstruction and segmentation of in vivo microct trabecular bone images

We present the minimal entropy prior for the iterative reconstruction of µCT projection data using the maximum a posteriori (MAP) framework. The minimal entropy prior restricts the number of intensity values in the reconstruction without requiring a priori information about the number of image tissues or tissue intensity estimates. We utilise the presented prior in the MAP framework to simultaneously reconstruct and segment trabecular bone from low quality µCT images. The MAP approach allows the straightforward incorporation of the in vivo scanner point spread function, while the entropy prior yields a segmentation that obeys to projection data.