Reliability of Hounsfield Units as a Measure of Bone Density: Applications in the Treatment of Thoracolumbar Fractures

2021 
Abstract Purpose The study sought to investigate the reliability of CT-derived Hounsfield unit (HU) measurements and ascertain the correlation between HU with qCT-derived bone mineral density (BMD) in cases of traumatic thoracolumbar fracture, based on native CT scans. Methods This study is a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of data sets from patients, which received native CT scans and bone mineral density measurements (qCT) of the same vertebral body. Two different CT scanner models were used. The inter-rater reliability of four rater, which measured HU in native CT scans, was calculated using intra class correlation coefficient for absolute agreement (ICC(3, 1)). For the correlation between HU and qCT values, respectively the prediction of qCT based on HU, linear regression was used. Bland-Altman plots were used for visual comparison of predicted and measured qCT values. Results In total 305 datasets were analyzed. CT scanner model were found to have no significant impact on HU (p=0.125). The inter-rater reliability for HU measurements from native CT scans was ICC(3, 1)=0.932 (CI95: 0.919 – 0.943, p Conclusions HU measurement shows very high inter-rater reliability. The HU values correlate closely with qCT BMD values. In summary, it seems that HU measurement is a suitable tool to readily and accurately assess bone quality without further scans or effort in cases of thoracolumbar spinal trauma.
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