A 'Google Earth' view of bone—with an eye toward disease prevention

A ‘Google Earth’ view of bone—with an eye toward disease prevention

Medical Xpress September 26, 2024
Eric Williamson, University of Virginia

Everyone knows that we can view the broad structures of our bones in the body by taking X-rays. Yet that’s just scratching the surface. Science now has a host of new imaging and characterization techniques to go deeper, and define more narrowly, the architecture and relative health of our bones at the micro-, nano- and sub-nanometer dimensions.

So many tools, in fact, that a University of Virginia mechanical engineer interested in injury biomechanics and the tissue architecture underlying various skeletal conditions wanted to find the ideal way to combine the usefulness of this latest technology.

In a new paper published this month in Scientific Reports, UVA Engineering and Applied Science assistant professor Toni Tang outlines an ideal workflow for combining...