Backscatter techniques for ultrasonic bone assessment at the hip

There is interest in developing ultrasonic backscatter techniques to detect changes in bone caused by osteoporosis. Backscatter measurements are performed by propagating ultrasonic pulses into bone and receiving signals returned from the porous microstructure. The goal of this study was to test the in vivo performance of two backscatter parameters developed for ultrasonic bone assessment: apparent integrated backscatter (AIB) and the normalized mean of the backscatter difference (nMBD). Measurements were performed at the hip (femoral neck) of 80 healthy volunteers. Results were analyzed by evaluating the correlation between measurements made at the left and right hip. AIB and nMBD both demonstrated significant correlations indicating sensitivity to naturally occurring variations in bone density. These results suggest that AIB and nMBD may be sensitive to changes in bone caused by osteoporosis.