Bone mineral density estimation from X-ray images

Trabecular patterns appearing on conventional X-ray films contain rich information about the bone status. In this paper, we present a simple method, which provides a good estimation of bone mineral density (BMD) from conventional X-ray images. The method was developed by considering the microscopic mechanism of bone resorption and creation processes. The method was applied to the distal radius X-ray images. We found that the method provides good estimations of real BMD values of distal radius. The correlation coefficient between the method and the real BMD is about 0.92.