Automatic quantification of vertebral cancellous bone remodeling during aging.

Anatomical transformation changes in vertebral spongy bone were quantified by automatic image analysis of microradiographs of 1 mm-thick sagittal slices from autopsied normal lumbar vertebrae (24 men and 28 women, age 35 to 96). Over a period of four decades, aging bone loss is 60% in women and 45% in men in the center of the vertebral body. With age, there is a new distribution of trabeculae: weight-bearing ones are twice (in young people) to six times (in old people) more numerous than transverse ones (measured on a sagittal slice). In the elderly, intertrabecular spaces enlarge while the proportion of the thinnest trabeculae increases.