Correlation study of scanning acoustic microscope reflection coefficients and image brightness intensities of micrographed osteons

Abstract

Scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) of Haversian bone at high frequency clearly shows differences in the brightness (gray) levels of individual osteons, which were observed to correspond to the differences in reflection coefficients measured with the SAM technique: the darker the bony regions on the SAM micrographs, the lower the SAM reflection coefficient values, and vice versa. We studied the correlation between differences in brightness and the related reflection coefficients of osteons on undecalcified transverse sections of goat tibial diaphysis using a 400-MHz burst mode lens on the Olympus UH3 SAM. Results showed that there was a strong linear correlation between brightness intensities and the corresponding reflection coefficients, with a correlation coefficient r = 0.99 (P ≪ 0.001) using gray level 210 as cutoff. This result suggested that the image brightness intensity of osteonic bone could be measured retrospectively to provide information on the stiffness of the corresponding bone matrix.