Establishment And Evaluation Of Bone Microstructure And Micro-finite Element Mechanical Correlation Model Of Cervical Articular Process

Background:Cervical articular process is an important structure involved in cervical spine movement,and it is also one of the important causes of chronic neck pain, cervical headache and secondary radiculopathy.Quantifying the spatial distribution of the cervical articular process microstructure is important for early diagnosis of bone disease and potential fracture risk.Purposes:To determine the spatial distribution characteristics,mechanical properties and correlation models of trabecular bone morphology in different regions of cervical articular processes,the effects of regional variability of the trabecular bone microarchitecture on mechanical capacity were studied to evaluate the stability and safety of cervical articular processes.Materials and Methods:We scanned two hundred and forty trabecular specimens of cervical articular process using micro-CT.Each articular were separated into four Regions of Interest（ROI）including superior-anterior（SA）regions,superior-posterior（SP）regions,inferior-anterior（IA）regions and inferior-posterior（IP）regions,each with a dimension of 5×5×6 mm³ with an identical voxel size of 16.75μm.Calculate its microstructure and use ABAQUS to build a micro-finite element model to fit the correlation model between the microstructure and the micro-finite element mechanical properties,and validated its effectiveness with a compression model of mechanical mechanics.Results and conclusions:The changes in trabecular volume fraction and trabecular thickness from C₂～C₅ to C₅～C₇ are similar to Young’s modulus,maximum force,maximum stress,and maximum strain,both increase first and then decrease,and the maximum and minimum joint processes and area values are consistent with allowable stress and 3D bone Density,mostly concentrated in C₅ and C₇,SA and SP areas.In contrast,Bone Surface/Bone Volume（BS/BV）,Trabecular separation（Tb.Sp）,Trabecular pattern factor（Tb.Pf）,yield strength,yield strain Yield strain is contrary to the above characteristics.That is,the maximum and minimum area values are mostly concentrated in C₇ and C₅ articular processes,SP and SA areas.The linear regression coefficients of articular processes BV/TV and BS/BV,Tb.Sp,Tb.Th are high（R²=0.6192,0.6503,0.6215）;There is a correlation and regression relationship between Young’s modulus and all microstructure parameters,among which the regression coefficients are higher with BV/TV,Tb.Th,and 3D bone Density（R²=0.5676,0.5479,0.6668）;And 3D bone density has a correlation and regression relationship with all mechanical parameters.Among them,the regression coefficients with Young’s modulus,yield strength,BV/TV and allowable stress are higher（R²=0.6668,0.7245,0.6729,0.7037）.Young’s modulus and force（max）,stress（max）,yield strength and force（max）,stress（max）,and allowable stress regression coefficients were higher（R²=0.7071,0.7314,0.7262,0.8663,0.9002）.The local microstructure and mechanical properties of the cervical articular processes have different degrees of contribution,and have good correlation and regression relationships.The validity of the micro-finite element model is verified,and the quality advantages and fragile areas of the microstructure and mechanical properties of cervical spine articular processes can be calculated.An effective model can be established to evaluate the stability,risk of injury,and material properties of the cervical spine.