Start

28/09/2023

End

27/09/2025

Status

In progress

ARCHIMEDES - frActuRe meCHanIcs Micro-scale bonE Damage mEchanismS

Start

28/09/2023

End

27/09/2025

Status

In progress

ARCHIMEDES - frActuRe meCHanIcs Micro-scale bonE Damage mEchanismS

The dramatic increase in fragility fractures, due to aging population and pathologies, with the related health and economic burden rise the urge of a cutting-edge perspective to prevent fractures in human bones. Now, an additional wake-up call rises from the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic: a slowdown in the bone formation processes is hypothesized as a direct outcome of the virus infection, which lead to a reduction in bone mass and strength. If this hypothesis would be confirmed, Covid-19 disease could have an effect on bone architecture deterioration, that may require preventive treatments to avoid long-term bone-related complications. Recent studies address the issue from a multi-scale perspective, elevating the micro-scale phenomena as the key for detecting early damage occurrence. However, several limitations arise specifically to define a quantitative framework to assess the contribution of micro-morphology (in particular lacunae) to fracture initiation and propagation. Moreover, the need for high resolution imaging imposes time-demanding post-processing phases. To address the current time-consuming and computationally expensive manual/semi-automatic segmenting steps, we aim at implementing convolutional neural network to detect the initiation and propagation of micro-scale damages. The expected results should highlight the intimate cross talks between toughening and weakening phenomena at micro-scale as a fundamental aspect for fracture mechanisms elucidation.

Publications

F. Buccino, I. Aiazzi, A. Casto, B. Liu, M.C. Sbarra, G. Ziarelli, G. Banfi, L.M. Vergani, The synergy of synchrotron imaging and convolutional neural networks towards the detection of human micro-scale bone architecture and damage, Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, Volume 137, January 2023, Article number 105576.
F. Buccino, S. Bagherifard, L. D'Amico, L. Zagra, G. Banfi, G.Tromba, L. M. Vergani, Assessing the intimate mechanobiological link between human bone micro-scale trabecular architecture and micro-damages, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 2022.
F. Buccino, L. Zagra, P. Savadori, C. Colombo, G. Grossi, G. Banfi, L.M. Vergani, Mapping Local Mechanical Properties of Human Healthy and Osteoporotic Femoral Heads, Materialia, 2021.

Magazine articles