| Summary: | 碩士 === 中臺科技大學 === 醫學工程暨材料研究所 === 99 === Bone mineral density (BMD) is a parameter for the evaluation of bone characteristic. Recently, several techniques have been developed for diagnosing osteoporosis. Among them, quantitative ultrasound (QUS) imaging technique is a cheap and non-invasive method applied in characterizing properties of bones and tendons. Broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA) and speed of sound (SOS) are the most popular parameters used in QUS for tissue characterization. This study aims at evaluating the BMD differences between dominant (DOM) and non-dominant (NDOM) feet and between subjects with and without regular exercise by measuring calcaneus bones using QUS. A total of 51 subjects were recruited for the experiments. The subjects were divided into two groups, general (18 males and 15 females) and athletic (10 males and 8 females), according to whether they have regular exercise or not. For each subject, 6 QUS images were captured for NDOM and DOM feet, respectively. Active shape model (ASM) and active contour model (ACM) were used to automatically segment the region of calcaneus bone from a QUS image, and then BUS and SOS parameters were evaluated accordingly.
The results indicate that BUAs for 31 out of the 33 subjects in the general group are lower at the DOM side than the NDOM side, in contrast 16 out of 18 subjects in the athletic group show lower BUA at the NDOM side. By considering means and standard deviations of BUA, the DOM side is significantly lower than the NDOM side (t-test, p<0.05) for general group; while in the athletic group, although the DOM side shows the tendency of lower BUA at the DOM side, which, however, doesn’t reach significant level (t-test, p=0.055>0.05). Regarding the relationship between sex and bone density, the BUA of male subjects is significantly higher than the female (p<0.05) for both general and athletic groups, indicating young males have higher BMD than young females. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that BUA of the athletic group at the DOM side is significantly higher than the NDOM side for both male and female subjects of the athletic group (t-test, p<0.05), however the NDOM side doesn’t show such a tendency (t-test, p>0.05). This indicates that regular exercise can effectively increase bone density, especially at the DOM side.
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