The effect of boundary conditions on experimentally measured trabecular strain in the thoracic spine

Vertebral bodies are the primary structural entities of the spine, and trabecular bone is the dominant material from which vertebral bodies are composed. Understanding the mechanical characteristics of vertebral trabecular bone, therefore, is of critical importance in the many clinical conditions that affect the spine. Numerous studies have loaded vertebral bodies to investigate the influence of trabecular bone characteristics on deformation and failure patterns, but the methods of load application have been inconsistent. These differences in the method of load application are a potential confounding factor in the interpretation of the experimental results. We investigated this problem by measuring the distribution of minimum principal strain and maximum shear strain magnitude within 6.35 mm thick samples cut from thoracic spine segments (T8–T10) and loaded to simulate three common experimental configurations. Measurements were made using the texture correlation technique, which extracts deformation patterns from digitized contact radiographs of samples under load. The three loading configurations examined were a three-body construct, a single vertebral body loaded through sectioned intervertebral discs, and polymethylmethacrylate molded directly to the endplates. Results indicate that from both probability and spatial distribution standpoints the best simulation of in vivo loading generates the least uniform strains. Loading through disc remnants or through plastic molded to the endplates causes increasing degrees of strain homogenization. This result has implications not only for the design of experiments involving spinal loading, but also for theories concerning the adaptation of trabecular bone to functional loads.