Phantom studies of triple photon absorptiometry and bone mineral measurement at a hip prosthesis.

The feasibility of using triple photon absorptiometry (TPA) for the measurement of bone mineral mass about a hip prosthesis was examined. A theoretical expression describing the variance of TPA measurements was verified using a triple photon source and phantom materials which simulate the soft tissue-bone mineral-metal prosthesis system. The expression for the variance was used to determine an optimized set of photon energies. It was shown that a precision of 3% could be obtained for reasonable measurement times using this optimized set of energies, and that TPA should be a feasible approach for measurement of bone mineral about a hip prosthesis.