Ultrasonic characterization of backscatter from human cancellous bone with a renyi entopy metric: Correlation with x-ray bone mineral density

Ultrasound backscatter has the potential to provide information useful for the diagnosis and monitoring of bone disorders (e.g., osteopenia, osteoporosis, and hard tissue sarcomas). We hypothesize that the Renyi entropy, previously shown to be sensitive to subtle changes in scattering from soft tissues, may also offer some utility in characterizing properties of bone. The goals of the present work were to investigate and compare the ability of energy- and entropy-based analyses of radio-frequency ultrasonic backscatter, to assess material properties of cancellous bone with respect to conventional quantitative computed X-ray tomography (QCT).