Prediction of low bone mass using a combinational approach of cortical and trabecular bone measures from dental panoramic radiographs

The aim of this study is to extract cortical and trabecular features of the mandible and to develop a novel combinational model of mandibular cortical thickness, trabecular bone area and age in order to predict low bone mineral density or osteoporosis from a dental panoramic radiograph. The study involved 64 south Indian women (age = 52.5 ± 12.7 years) categorised into two groups (normal and low bone mineral density) based on total femur bone mineral density. The dental panoramic radiographs were obtained by a digital scanner, and measurement of total bone mineral density at the right femur was performed by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scanner. The mandibular cortical thickness and panoramic mandibular index were measured bilaterally, and the mean values were considered. The region of interest of 128 x 128 pixels around the mental foramen region was manually cropped and subjected to pre-processing, normalisation and average threshold-based segmentation to determine trabecular bone area. Multiple linear regression analyses of cortical and trabecular measures along with age were performed to develop a combinational model to classify subjects as normal and low bone mineral density. The proposed approach demonstrated strong correlation (r = 0.76; p < 0.01) against the total bone mineral density and resulted in accuracy, sensitivity and positive predictive values of 0.84, 0.92 and 0.85, respectively; the receiver operating characteristic outcomes disclosed that the...
Source: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part H: Journal of Engineering in Medicine - Category: Biomedical Engineering Authors: Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research