Material Modeling of Cortical Bone: A review

Abstract

The aim of this review is to provide a critical overview of the material modelling of cortical bone in the context of patient-specific finite element simulation for osteoporosis diagnosis.

The paper provides motivation for the appraisal of the state-of-the art in cortical bone modelling through discussions of contested mechanisms of osteoporosis and the promising potential of patient-specific modelling in the clinical domain. Subsequently, a comprehensive set of material models developed in the last 10 years are analyzed based on their fidelity to bone material characteristics and mechanical response, and their ability to be incorporated into finite element bone simulation workflows.

Based on the thematic analysis of material models for cortical bone, it emerges that a key development in the field is the increasing prevalence of multi-scale models that can incorporate features from multiple levels of the bone hierarchical structure. The most advanced constitutive models of cortical bone are beginning to reflect biological mechanisms of damage, osteoblast driven remodeling and fatigue. Key challenges that must be overcome to increase prevalence of advanced material models in finite element simulation include lack of high resolution in-vivo imaging techniques, standardization, and methodology to determine patient-specific material parameters.