McGivern Hannah, Greenwood Charlene, Márquez-Grant Nicholas, Kranioti Elena F, Xhemali Bledar, Zioupos Peter
Cranfield Forensic Institute, Cranfield University, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham, United Kingdom.
School of Chemistry and Physical Sciences, Keele University, Keele, United Kingdom.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2020 Jan 22;7:467. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2019.00467. eCollection 2019.
The mechanical and structural properties of bone are known to change significantly with age. Within forensic and archaeological investigations, the medial end of the clavicle is typically used for estimating the age-at-death of an unknown individual. Although, this region of the skeleton is of interest to forensic and clinical domains, alterations beyond the macro-scale have not been fully explored. For this study, non-destructive micro-computed tomography (μ-CT) was employed to characterize structural alterations to the cancellous bone of the medial clavicle. Fresh human cadaveric specimens (12-59 years) obtained at autopsy were utilized for this study, and were scanned with a voxel size of ~83 μm. Morphometric properties were quantified and indicated that the bone volume, connectivity density, mineral density, and number of trabeculae decreased with age, while the spacing between the trabeculae increased with age. In contrast to other sub-regions of the skeleton, trabecular thickness, and degree of anisotropy did not correlate with age. Collectively, this could suggest that the network is becoming increasingly perforated with age rather than exhibiting trabecular thinning. These results are used in the context of deriving a potential protocol for forensic investigations by using this particular and largely unexplored region of the skeleton, and provide inspiration for future experiments concerning micro-architectural and small scale changes in other regions of the human skeleton.
众所周知，骨骼的力学和结构特性会随着年龄的增长而发生显著变化。在法医和考古调查中，锁骨内侧端通常用于估算未知个体的死亡年龄。尽管骨骼的这一区域在法医和临床领域备受关注，但宏观尺度之外的变化尚未得到充分研究。在本研究中，采用无损微计算机断层扫描（μ-CT）来表征锁骨内侧松质骨的结构变化。本研究使用了尸检时获取的新鲜人类尸体标本（12至59岁），并以约83μm的体素大小进行扫描。对形态计量学特性进行了量化，结果表明骨体积、连通性密度、矿物质密度和小梁数量随年龄增长而减少，而小梁间距随年龄增长而增加。与骨骼的其他子区域不同，小梁厚度和各向异性程度与年龄无关。总体而言，这可能表明随着年龄的增长，网络越来越多孔，而不是小梁变薄。这些结果被用于推导一个潜在的法医调查方案，该方案利用了骨骼中这个特殊且大部分未被探索的区域，并为未来关于人类骨骼其他区域微观结构和小尺度变化的实验提供了启示。
