Bone health in children and adolescents: the available imaging techniques.

Many clinical conditions affecting children can be associated with a loss of bone mass and quality, leading to an increased risk of fracture over the life. Actually, different techniques are available to assess bone density and/or bone quality, but their employment in children and adolescents requires the acknowledgement of their characteristics and reference values, as well as of age, sex and pubertal stage of the patient. In this paper, the main densitometric techniques are described, and the principal conditions potentially affecting bone health in young people are indicated, with the intention of providing a small guide to prevent fractures in people at risk.