3D non-linear enhancement of tubular microscopic bone porosities

The investigation of cellular aspects of bone tissue is generally performed from 2D microscopic techniques. Recent advances in Synchrotron Radiation Micro-CT allow to image biological samples at a sub-micrometric scale. In this paper, we propose to study the feasibility of this technique to study the bone lacuno-canalicular system, consisting in a complex network of thin canaliculi (diameter ~500 nm) joining osteocytes. Due to the limited spatial resolution of the imaging system compared to the structure size and the constraints in term of dose, the images have a low signal to noise ratio and the detection of canaliculi is challenging. We propose a 3D non-linear enhancement technique based on Hessian analysis. The method is first evaluated on synthetic images, then we show, for the first time, a 3D rendering of the canalicular network based on experimental data.