The objective of this study was to study the age-related adaptation of lumbar vertebral trabecular bone at the apparent level, as well as the tissue level in three orthogonal directions. Ninety trabecular specimens were obtained from six normal L4 vertebral bodies of six male cadavers in two age groups, three aged 62 years and three aged 69 years, and were scanned using a high-resolution micro-computed tomography （micro-CT） system, then converted to micro- finite element models to do micro-finite element analyses. The relationship between apparent stiffness and bone volume fraction, and the tissue level yon Mises stress distribution for each trabecular specimen when compressed separately in the longitudinal direction, medial-lateral and anterior-posterior directions （transverse directions） were derived and compared between two age groups. The results showed that at the apparent level, trabecular bones from 69-year group had stiffer bone structure relative to their volume fractions in all three directions, and in both age groups, changes in bone volume fraction could explain more variations in apparent stiffness in the longitudinal direction than the transverse directions; at the tissue level, aging had little effect on the tissue von Mises stress distributions for the compressions in all the three directions. The novelty of the present study was that it provided quantitative assessments on the age and direction- related adaptation of Chinese male lumbar vertebral trabecular bone from two different levels： stiffness at the apparent level and stress distribution at the tissue level. It may help to understand the failure mechanisms and fracture risks of vertebral body associated with aging and direction for the prevention of fracture risks in elder individuals.
The objective of this paper is to identify the effects of mechanical disuse and basic multi-cellular unit （BMU） activation threshold on the form of trabecular bone during menopause. A bone adaptation model with mechanical- biological factors at BMU level was integrated with finite element analysis to simulate the changes of trabecular bone structure during menopause. Mechanical disuse and changes in the BMU activation threshold were applied to the model for the period from 4 years before to 4 years after menopause. The changes in bone volume fraction, trabecular thickness and fractal dimension of the trabecular structures were used to quantify the changes of trabecular bone in three different cases associated with mechanical disuse and BMU activation threshold. It was found that the changes in the simulated bone volume fraction were highly correlated and consistent with clinical data, and that the trabecular thickness reduced signi-ficantly during menopause and was highly linearly correlated with the bone volume fraction, and that the change trend of fractal dimension of the simulated trabecular structure was in correspondence with clinical observations. The numerical simulation in this paper may help to better understand the relationship between the bone morphology and the mecha-nical, as well as biological environment; and can provide a quantitative computational model and methodology for the numerical simulation of the bone structural morphological changes caused by the mechanical environment, and/or the biological environment.
