In vivo characterization of long-bone in animal model by ultrasonic reflection parameters: IRC and FSIR

In this work, an ultrasound (US) pulse-echo method was proposed to characterize long bone diaphysis of in vivo animal model. Two quantitative parameters (Integrated Reflection Coefficient ?? IRC and Frequency slope integrated reflection - FSIR) related to US reflection, were applied to the echo from the muscle/bone interface in both femurs of five Wistar rats. FSIR is proposed here is the fraction of the apparent reflection corresponding to each frequency. The US signal is acquired from 3 previous chosen positions, one millimeter apart from each other, along the femur central region. The parameters were estimated for the three positions than averaged to represent the femur. The results showed that their values statistically belong to the same group. This is indication that the proposed method (from acquisition protocol to parameter estimation) has potential to characterize normal in vivo long bones in animal models.