Abstract

In recent decades, ultrasound-based analysis of cancellous bone health has emerged as an affordable and reliable alternative to ionizing radiation-based methods for estimating bone health parameters. The ultrasound probe plays a crucial role in evaluating various parameters of cancellous bone health. A single-crystal element transducer probe was proposed for estimating cancellous bone health parameters. The proposed method utilizes the k-space pseudo-spectral simulation technique available in the k-Wave toolbox. Three-dimensional (3D) cancellous bone phantoms representing healthy and osteoporotic bone samples from the human heel, sacrum, C2, and L3 vertebrae are constructed using 3D reconstruction techniques. Key cancellous bone health parameters, namely time of flight (ToF) and received signal strength, are computed using the k-Wave toolbox. The results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves performance comparable to multi-crystal element transducer-based techniques. Furthermore, the proposed approach has the potential to significantly reduce implementation costs for commercial applications.

Keywords

Ultrasound imaging, Cancellous bone health, Single-crystal transducer, k-Wave simulation, Bone phantom modeling, Time of flight (ToF).

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