9753164 van der Meulen Mechanics plays an important role in the growth, development and adaptation of the skeleton. Bone tissue is a living material which responds and adapts to its mechanical environment. This research will examine the influence of mechanical loading on trabecular bone adaptation. Trabecular bone is the anisotropic low density bone. An animal model of trabecular bone adaptation has been developed at The Hospital for Special Surgery, an affiliate of Cornell University Medical Center. Compressive forces will be applied to the distal femur of adult rabbits and the resulting changes in trabecular architecture will be determined. The objective of this study is to model and simulate these adaptation experiments. Finite element models of the experiments will be created from three- dimensional micro-computed tomography images of the retrieved specimens. From these models, the local loading conditions will be determined and correlated with trabecular bone adaptation. Then the models will be used to simulate the trabecular functional adaptation to the applied loading. The adaptation models are the first application of an adaptation framework developed at the Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; the model application will be in collaboration with an investigator in Nijmegen. The goal is to acquire an understanding of bone functional adaptation important in the etiology of many skeletal disorders, including osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. ***
