Summary Statement
In a retrospective study, FE-based bone strength from CT data showed a greater ability than aBMD to discriminate proximal femur fractures versus controls.
Introduction
Personalised Finite Element (FE) models from Computed Tomography (CT) data are superior to bone mineral density (BMD) in predicting proximal femoral strength in vitro [Cody, 1999]. However, results similar to BMD were obtained in vivo, in retrospective classification of generic prevalent fractures [Amin, 2011] and in prospective classification of femoral fractures [Orwoll, 2009]. The aim of this work is to test, in a case-control retrospective study, the ability of a different, validated FE modelling procedure [Schileo, 2008] to: (i) discriminate between groups of proximal femoral fractures and controls; (ii) individually classify fractures and controls.
