Mechanical adaptation of human trabecular bone: experimental and computational study

Adaptation is a complex feature of living tissues, including bone. Compared with engineering materials, the structural and material properties of bone keep changing to fulfil the requirements of physiological functions throughout a lifetime. However, a disorder of this process could lead to serious bone diseases such as osteoporosis. Understanding the adaptation associated with architecture and mechanical properties of trabecular bone are key factors in diagnosis, prediction and treatment of osteoporosis. There are well-established theories that mechanical loads such as exercise can stimulate structural adaptation of trabecular bone. Previous research focused mostly on the effect of in-vivo loading on trabecular microstructure at the whole-bone level in both animal or human studies, while understanding of mechanically-induced local adaptation of human trabecular bone is rather limited.

The study was based on a hypothesis that trabecular-bone adaptation, including microstructural and mechanical competence, is inherently heterogeneous, hence, may not be captured adequately by the global analysis based on averaging.