Bone micromorphometric parameters are generally analyzed with micro CT to reveal two-
and three-dimensional structures. These parameters are generally used for new bone
formation studies such as tissue engineering and biomaterials studies. Different threshold
methods are used for the image segmentation of bone micromorphometric parameters.
However, these different threshold methods provide different results for the bones
analyzed. This study aimed to compare thresholding methods to evaluate bone micromorphometric
parameters in the mouse bone. A dataset containing 15 mouse tibia was used to analyze
the different thresholding methods for bone micromorphometric parameter analysis.
These threshold methods were used to analyze the mouse tibia (n = 15) with thresholded
bones. The threshold methods and the analysis were used directly from CTAn (Bruker
Micro-CT). The results were compared between the threshold methods, which included
bone volume, trabecular number, connectivity, trabecular separation, and other parameters.
There was agreement to some extent for all bone micromorphometric analyses using the
different thresholding methods. The results showed that the thresholding method showed
good agreement for connectivity and trabecular thickness, but the other parameters
showed limited agreement. The evaluation of threshold methods allows for the comparison
of image segmentation and the quantification of mouse tibia micromorphometric parameters.
This study may enable the analysis of bone micromorphometric parameters using the
relatively close threshold method in image segmentation across different research
groups.
