3D reconstruction and quantification of porous structures

In this paper, we describe the methodology that we have designed to quantify the pores distribution in bone implants and the empirical results that we have obtained with BioCAD designed scaffolds, microCT and confocal microscopy data. Our method is based on 3D digital topology properties of the porous structure. We segment the 3D images into three regions: exterior, bone and pore space. Next, we divide the pore space into pores and connection paths. We compute a graph of the pore space such that each node of the graph represents a pore, and an arc between two nodes indicates that the two pores are path-connected. On the basis of the graph and the segmented model, we are able to compute several properties of the material such as global porosity, effective porosity and radial pore distribution. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd.