Publications by authors named "Caitlyn J Collins"

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) has been linked to increased osteocyte apoptosis, local accumulation of mineralized lacunar spaces, and microdamage suggesting an impairment of the mechanoregulation network in affected individuals. Diabetic neuropathy might exacerbate this dysfunction through direct effects on bone turnover, and indirect effects on balance, muscle strength, and gait. However, the in vivo effects of impaired bone mechanoregulation on bone remodeling in humans remain underexplored.

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Background: Recent applications of high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) have demonstrated that changes in local bone remodelling can be quantified in vivo using longitudinal three-dimensional image registration. However, certain emerging applications, such as fracture healing and joint analysis, require larger multi-stack scan regions that can result in stack shift image artifacts. These artifacts can be detrimental to the accurate alignment of the bone structure across multiple timepoints.

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Article Synopsis
  • Local mechanical stimuli are crucial for maintaining bone health and adaptation, and their disruption can lead to bone loss.
  • This study used data from two participant groups to enhance detection methods for bone remodeling and assess the precision of measuring these changes in living humans.
  • Key findings showed no significant differences in scan results over time, with precision rates indicating that bone formation is most likely in high-strain areas while resorption occurs in low-strain regions.
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Purpose Of Review: The purpose of this review is to summarize insights gained by finite element (FE) model-based mechanical biomarkers of bone for in vivo assessment of bone development and adaptation, fracture risk, and fracture healing.

Recent Findings: Muscle-driven FE models have been used to establish correlations between prenatal strains and morphological development. Postnatal ontogenetic studies have identified potential origins of bone fracture risk and quantified the mechanical environment during stereotypical locomotion and in response to increased loading.

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Article Synopsis
  • Image quality issues from subject movement can compromise the accuracy of bone assessments using high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT), leading to potentially unusable data from scans.
  • Traditional methods for scoring motion artifacts are slow and subjective, risking the acceptance of poor-quality scans that can misrepresent patient conditions.
  • This study presents a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that automates the prediction of motion scores from HR-pQCT images, achieving high accuracy and reliability, which could streamline quality control in clinical use.
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High resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) provides methods for quantifying volumetric bone mineral density and microarchitecture necessary for early diagnosis of bone disease. When combined with a longitudinal imaging protocol and finite element analysis, HR-pQCT can be used to assess bone formation and resorption (i.e.

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Purpose Of Review: Diabetes mellitus is defined by elevated blood glucose levels caused by changes in glucose metabolism and, according to its pathogenesis, is classified into type 1 (T1DM) and type 2 (T2DM) diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus is associated with multiple degenerative processes, including structural alterations of the bone and increased fracture risk. High-resolution peripheral computed tomography (HR-pQCT) is a clinically applicable, volumetric imaging technique that unveils bone microarchitecture in vivo.

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simulations aim to provide fast, inexpensive, and ethical alternatives to years of costly experimentation on animals and humans for studying bone remodeling, its deregulation during osteoporosis and the effect of therapeutics. Within the varied spectrum of modeling techniques, bone cell population dynamics and agent-based multiphysics simulations have recently emerged as useful tools to simulate the effect of specific signaling pathways. In these models, parameters for cell and cytokine behavior are set based on experimental values found in literature; however, their use is currently limited by the lack of clinical data on cell numbers and their behavior as well as cytokine concentrations, diffusion, decay and reaction rates.

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Patients at high risk of fracture due to metabolic diseases frequently undergo long-term antiresorptive therapy. However, in some patients, treatment is unsuccessful in preventing fractures or causes severe adverse health outcomes. Understanding load-driven bone remodelling, i.

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Clinical evaluation of fracture healing is often limited to an assessment of fracture bridging from radiographic images, without consideration for other aspects of bone quality. However, recent advances in HRpQCT offer methods to accurately monitor microstructural bone remodeling throughout the healing process. In this study, local bone formation and resorption were investigated during the first year post fracture in both the fractured (n = 22) and contralateral (n = 19) radii of 34 conservatively treated patients (24 female, 10 male) who presented with a unilateral radius fracture at the Innsbruck University Hospital, Austria.

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Article Synopsis
  • Radius fractures are common but lack standardized treatment protocols; understanding the healing process can improve patient outcomes.
  • High-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) allows for detailed monitoring of fractures but is currently limited by time-consuming manual image contouring.
  • A new automated contouring method, 3D morphological geodesic active contours (3D-GAC), shows high accuracy and robustness in analyzing HR-pQCT images of both fractured and intact radii, facilitating better evaluation in clinical settings.
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High-resolution peripheral quantitative computed-tomography (HR-pQCT) has the potential to become a powerful clinical assessment and diagnostic tool. Given the recent improvements in image resolution, from 82 to 61 μm, this technology may be used to accurately quantify in vivo bone microarchitecture, a key biomarker of degenerative bone diseases. However, computational methods to assess bone microarchitecture were developed for micro computed tomography (micro-CT), a higher-resolution technology only available for ex vivo studies, and validation of these computational analysis techniques against the gold-standard micro-CT has been inconsistent and incomplete.

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  • Different methods to evaluate bone stiffness can vary a lot based on the background of the researchers and the complexity of bone itself.
  • The study focused on quantifying errors in predicting long-bone bending stiffness (flexural rigidity) using a bi-material bone surrogate tested under specific conditions.
  • Results showed that CAD-based finite element analysis (FEA) was the most accurate for determining bone stiffness, while mechanical testing was the least reliable, often underestimating flexural rigidity.
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Article Synopsis
  • The rising rates of osteoporosis and fractures highlight the need for effective methods to assess changes in bone mechanical properties like stiffness and strength.
  • Common techniques used for this purpose include mechanical testing, various imaging methods, and advanced analytical calculations, but validating these methods is challenging due to the complexity of bone structures.
  • The study introduces a new bone-surrogate designed for computed tomography compatibility, aiming to provide reliable mechanical properties for testing and improving methods that predict bone bending stiffness.
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The reported failure rate for full veneer crowns of canine teeth of dogs is suboptimal, particularly in teeth with naturally poor retentive features, such as those with low height/diameter (H/D) ratios or high convergence angles (CAs). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the application of axial grooves in an effort to develop a crown preparation design that enhances the retention of full veneer crowns in dogs. Crown dislodgment testing was performed on cast alloy dies of canine teeth with unfavorable retention features (low H/D and high CA) prepared with (n = 14) and without axial grooves (n = 15) to evaluate the force required to dislodge a cemented full veneer crown.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Limited data suggests that crown retention on the maxillary fourth premolar may be comparable to that of canine teeth, indicating a need for improved preparation design.
  • * A study found that adding axial grooves to the crown preparation significantly increased the force needed to dislodge the crown, suggesting that this design modification can enhance crown retention.
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Objective: This study was performed in order to determine if mathematical modeling of the canine teeth in dogs could be utilized to provide an accurate and reliable estimation of crown surface area that could be used in both a research and a clinical setting.

Materials And Methods: Actual surface area (aSA) calculations for 32 stone dies of clinical crown preparations were acquired utilizing a tridimensional (3D) laser scanner and 3D computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) software applications. These calculations were used as a control.

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In the United States, approximately eight million osseous fractures are reported annually, of which 5-10% fail to create a bony union. Osteoblast-specific deletion of the gene Pten in mice has been found to stimulate bone growth and accelerate fracture healing. Healing rates at four weeks increased in femurs from Pten osteoblast conditional knock-out mice (Pten-CKO) compared to wild-type mice (WT) of the same genetic strain as measured by an increase in mechanical stiffness and failure load in four-point bending tests.

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The failure of an osseous fracture to heal (development of a non-union) is a common and debilitating clinical problem. Mice lacking the tumor suppressor Pten in osteoblasts have dramatic and progressive increases in bone volume and density throughout life. Since fracture healing is a recapitulation of bone development, we investigated the process of fracture healing in mice lacking Pten in osteoblasts (Ocn-cre(tg/+;)Pten(flox/flox) ).

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