Quantitative computed tomography versus densitometry in diagnostic of osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a bone disease, which leads to an increased risk of fracture and it is in focus worldwide, due to increase of elderly population. There is a continuous correlation between bone mineral density (BMD), osteoporosis and risk of fracture. This study deals with approach the two principal diagnostic techniques of the disease: dual energy x-rays absorptiometry (DXA) and quantitative computed tomography (QCT). These techniques use BMD to access patient´s osteoporotic diagnostic. Although DXA is the only technique with a validate criterion defined by World Health Organization (WHO), QCT is the only image technique able to access exclusively to BMD of trabecular bone, firstly affected in case of disease. In comparative analysis between DXA and QCT exams, the main conclusions are the two-dimensional overlapping which negatively affects the DXA results and the incorrect use of the WHO criterion to analyze QCT results.