Development of a DXA-Based Patient-Specific Finite Element Model for Assessing Osteoporotic Fracture Risk

In this thesis, a two-dimensional (2D) finite element (FE) model was developed from the patient’s hip DXA image to evaluate osteoporotic fracture risk. The loading configuration was designed to simulate a lateral fall onto the greater trochanter. Bone inhomogeneous mechanical properties (e.g. Young’s modulus) assigned to the FE model were correlated to bone mineral density captured in DXA image using empirical functions. In-house MATLAB codes were developed to investigate the effects of different factors such as bone mineral density, femoral neck length, neck diameter, neck angle and patient’s body weight on fracture risk. The 2D FE model constructed from DXA image was able to de-termine the factors which affect fracture risk to a greater extent based on the location of femur. The model developed here can be considered as a first attempt for investigating the effects of different parameters on fracture risk using patient specific 2D FE method.