New procedure to construct an anisotropic elastic FE-model based on swine femoral bones using numerical modeling

This work presents a new procedure to determine the density of bone tissue from collected data by means of computed axial tomography (CAT) and bone density correlations of cancellous and cortical tissue with their elastic properties which were obtained from structure reconstruction software to determine the apparent density of bone. The main objective is to determine the anisotropic elastic properties in swine femoral bones on two orthogonal directions to produce a most real behavior of bone FE-model. A TC Brilliance axial scanner (tomograph) was used to obtain the desired images, which were then processed in the Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine format using different software packages, including Scan IP™, Scan FE v3.1™, and ANSYS vl2™. Five Duroc-Jersey type swine femur specimens were used for the analysis. These specimens are considered to be equivalent to human specimens of 50 to 55 years of age, since they have been used for eighteen months in experimental processes. The experimental procedure included the processing of 60 tomographic cuts, which allowed the determination of the zone where the density maximum and minimum values of the bone tissue seem to be located. The results obtained displayed the anisotropic elastic behavior for each bone specimen within a voxel unit of precision. The findings of this study could allow a significant advance in the development of customized endo-prostheses by determining the elastic properties of the bone and developing more accurate FE-models. This will contribute to the improvement of the performance of artificial implants as well as to increasing the service life of these prostheses.