Trabecular bone osteoporosis model with bone screw

thingiverse

[Osteoporosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoporosis) is a disease of the elderly that is gradually degrading bone tissue, making it prone to fractures. It is estimated that around 200mio people have osteoporosis. Globally, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 men over the age of 50 will have an osteoporotic fracture. These two 3D printing models demonstrate the destructive effect of osteoporosis on human bone micro structure. The "healthy" model corresponds to [trabecular bone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone) of a young person and the "osteoporosis" model shows a trabecular microstructure weakened by osteoporosis. The models include a bone screw as used in orthopedic surgeries for implant fixation that fits into both models. It is obvious that its fixation is stronger in the healthy bone and weaker in the osteoporotic bone. This shows that osteoporosis not only leads to a higher fracture risk, but fractures are also more difficult to treat. A geometric measure for the amount of bone tissue per unit volume is [BV/TV](http://bonej.org/volumefraction) ((B)one (V)olume over (T)issue (V)olume). The "healthy" model has a BV/TV of 30% and the "osteoporosis" model has a BV/TV of 10%. To remember this descriptive values for each bone model, two labels are included, that can be 3D-printed and attached by a string. The two models were created from [micro-ct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_microtomography) images with [medtool](http://www.medtool.at) at the [Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences](https://kl.ac.at). The idea was initiated by [dhp73](https://www.thingiverse.com/dhp73/about). The models are upscaled by a factor of 15x. In reality the bone cubes had a size of: 6.1x6.1x6.1mm.