What Is Bone Density?
Bone mineral density refers to the amount of bone mineral contained in a unit volume (bulk density) or unit area (area density) of bone. It is an important indicator of bone strength and can predict fracture risk or monitor treatment response to related diseases.
Why is bone density measured?
Bone densitometry is currently the most commonly used method for diagnosing osteoporosis, predicting fracture risk and evaluating the effect of drug therapy.
Why is bone mineral density not recommended for quantitative heel ultrasonography?
The principle of quantitative heel ultrasound to measure bone density is to reflect the bone density information of the measured calcaneus through the absorption or attenuation and reflection of ultrasonic waves by the calcaneus of the measured heel.
The biggest advantage of quantitative ultrasound is low cost, no radiation, and can reflect the density, structure and elasticity of bone tissue from the quality and quantity of bone tissue.
However, the bone mineral density measured by quantitative ultrasound is not the real bone mineral content, but uses different parameters to indirectly reflect the changes of bone mass at the measured site. In addition, this method can only be used to measure the bone density of human limbs, and cannot measure the more valuable bone density of human trunk.
Therefore, quantitative ultrasonography is not currently the preferred recommendation for bone densitometry.
Why is bone mineral density not recommended for quantitative CT?
Quantitative CT is a method of measuring bone mineral density using a conventional CT machine.
Quantitative CT measurement of bone mineral density has its advantages, but it has certain drawbacks compared with DXA. For example, quantitative CT is a single-energy X-ray, and the results are easily affected by the bone marrow fat content in the examined bones. Quantitative CT equipment is large, expensive, and expensive. The operation is complicated and the radiation exposure is large.
Therefore, quantitative CT is not currently the preferred recommendation for bone densitometry.
