Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
Objectives: Cortical porosity is used as a proxy of bone quality, fragility, and remo- deling activity in anthropological contexts. Histological quantification is limited by time-intensive manual annotation. Pore Extractor 2D is an ImageJ toolkit developed for computer-assisted pore identification and automated pore morphometry. Materials and Methods: Toolkit components include: (1) Utilities for cortical border clearing, (2) Image Pre-Processing: Image contrast enhancement and noise reduction, (3) Pore Extractor: User-directed options for segmenting, closing, and smoothing pore spaces, (4) Pore Modifier: Utilities to expedite manual correction of extracted pore spaces, and (5) Pore Analyzer: Morphometric analyses by pore type and anatomical region. Pore Extractor 2D was validated against manual annotation in a sample of midshaft mid-thoracic human ribs (n = 30). Intraskeletal and regional analyses were piloted on matched (n = 9) human midshaft femora, tibiae, and sixth ribs. Results: Pore Extractor 2D was statistically consistent with manual annotation of bone area, percent porosity, pore density, and mean pore size. The toolkit signifi- cantly (p < .05) reduced the smoothing effect of manual annotation by fitting pore borders to pixel brightness variations. Intraskeletal analyses found that the femur and tibia significantly exceeded the rib in “cortical” type porosity, while the rib predomi- nantly formed “trabecularized” type porosity. Regional analyses determined that pore system expansion was elevated in the anterior femur, the anterior and medial tibia, and the cutaneous cortex of the rib. Discussion: This toolkit provides expedited, semi-automated porosity quantification that replicates manual annotation. Intraskeletal and regional variation in pore mor- phometry reflect localized strain patterning.
Comments
This work was originally published in Journal of Biological Anthropology, available at https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24618
This article is distributed under the terms and conditions of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)