BONE IMAGING THE CLOSEST THING TO ART IN MEDICINE

Advances in bone imaging have had a tremendous impact on our knowledge of skeletal anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology while at the same time generating images of both aesthetic and scientific interest. Bone imaging for assessing bone quality very much lends itself to multidisciplinary input and collaboration across scientific disciplines, helping to drive technological and analytical advances in the assessment of bone quality. This has allowed a much deeper awareness of the changes that occur in bone quality with increasing age and disease, as well as improved fracture risk prediction and better treatment monitoring. Currently, many high-resolution imaging modalities exist to evaluate bone quality, though all have their particular merits and limitations. The ideal imaging modality, which has yet to fully emerge, would allow an accurate prediction of bone strength, discriminate at-risk individuals, identify which aspects of bone strength are faltering, and precisely monitor the effect of treatment. When this day comes, the occurrence of unheralded debilitating osteoporotic fractures in themiddle-aged and elderly will be seen as an unusual, rather than a usual, event. In the meantime, we can look forward to evenmore aesthetically pleasing images of bone structure, images that help linkform to function in the human body and as such administer a helpful dose of science to the art of medicine.