Effects of hormone treatment on the mechanical characteristics of osteoporotic vertebral trabecular bone using RP and FE models

Considerable researchers analyzed the effects of hormone treatment on osteoporotic vertebral bones. Hormone treatment of age-related osteoporotic bone has a potential to decrease an incidence of osteoporosis. In the present paper, experimental and simulated tests for the mechanical characteristics of osteoporotic models and their hormone-treated models were investigated. Three dimensional (3D) geometries of the models (rapid prototyped and finite element models) were generated from high resolution micro-computed tomography (μ-CT, Skyscan 1076, Skyscan, Belgium) scan data for the central parts of the second lumbar vertebrae. From these 3D geometries, cubic specimens with side length 6.5mm were formed and analyzed. Rapid prototyped (RP) models, instead of the real bone specimen, of vertebral trabecular bones were created in the fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine. In the present study, experimental compressions test for RP models were carried out by the INSTRON testing machine (8874 series, Instron, UK). The mechanical characteristics of finite element (FE) models for simulated compression tests were compared with physical predictions from RP models for experimental compression test. As a result, it is found that the hormone therapy is likely to be less effective than reported by previous researchers. A remarkable agreement was achieved between the results obtained from the experimental tests for RP models and simulated tests for FE models.