Analysis methods of CT-scan images for the characterization of the bone texture: First results

Osteoporosis is a bone pathology inducing an increased fragility of the skeleton. With the lengthening of the duration of life, this pathology is going to concern an increasing population. A better knowledge of the quality of the bone structure can help a best prevention of the fracture risk. The bone mineral density is not the unique factor to determine the quality of the bone structure. The trabecular bone structure play an important role on the strength of the bone. The ultimate objective of the planned work is to propose a way for the characterization of the bone texture from the analysis of CT-Scan images. This would allow an assistance to the diagnosis in the discrimination of healthy from pathologic patients. This paper emphasizes a preliminary study concerning the selection of some characterization tools of the bone texture. The selectivity is lead by the analysis of respective sensitivities of considered methods. We are going to study here several methods of texture analysis. These methods are based on the fractal geometry whose application to the analysis of texture is recent. We also give examples of results on healthy and pathological patients.