
µFEA of a Rabbit Femur
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Given the ethical and practical limitations of conducting preliminary medical studies on humans, New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits serve as a common model for treatment validation. An important such medical study is laser ablation treatment on bones with tumors, which may increase the risk of fracture, especially in the femur. Finite element (FE) analyses based on clinical computer tomography (CT) scans (referred to as CTFEA) have gradually gained recognition as a technology that provides insight into the mechanical response of long bones at the organ (whole bone) scale. However, due to its small anatomical size, clinical CT resolution cannot characterize the rabbit bone structure. Micro-computed tomography (µCT) scans are essential to capture the detailed rabbit femoral architecture [1]. In their pioneering paper, van Rietbergen et. al [2] introduce the voxel-based micro finite element (µFE) that converts each voxel in µCT images into a micro-mechanical model. µFE is being used routinely on small bone pieces (usually trabecular tissues), however, a full femur µFE model has not yet been developed. These large models involve hundreds of millions of degrees of freedom (DOFs) and therefore require designated µFE solvers for analysis. We present a step-by-step process (Fig. 1) for the generation of µFE models of an entire rabbit femur, resulting in hundreds of millions of DOFs. The µCT data acquisition is followed by segmentation using MIA [3]. Subsequently, SimpleWare generates a 3D µFE model including boundary conditions. Finally, the FE library MFEM [4] is used to solve the linear elastic system of equations and post-process the results of over 250 million DOFs. Numerical results compared to experimental observations for validation purposes will be presented.