Congratulations to Dr. David McErlain for receiving the T. Chen Fong Fellowship in Medical Imaging Science

Dr. McErlain will be developing a method, to non-invasively assess three-dimensional bone structure and strength with existing clinical CT equipment. His hopes are to bridge the gap between what can be measured in the laboratory and what can be visualized in the clinic. Through high-resolution micro-CT imaging of bones from anatomical sites susceptible to osteoporotic fracture (hip, wrist, spine), we will quantify the microscopic structure of the bone, which has been linked to bone strength, but cannot be seen using traditional CT-scanners. From these data, we hope to create 3D maps which can be transposed onto clinical image of the same bones using image registration techniques. It is our ultimate goal to further expand this method retrospectively by applying it to routine clinical CT data, collected for unrelated exams, to assess the efficacy of ‘image recycling’ for advanced 3D estimation of bone strength, and hence fracture risk.