DEVICE AND METHOD FOR DETERMINING FUTURE FRACTURE RISK

摘要

A DEXA bone densitometer produces estimates of future fracture risk from a current fracture data derived from a lateral image of a patient's thoracic and lumbar spine taken in a single scan, typically with the patient on her or his side, and from numerical bone mineral density measurements. The bone densitometer produces a lateral image of the patient's thoracic and lumbar spine (106) and develops numerical bone characteristics data (104), and future bone fracture risk data and produces a 3D graph (108). Single to dual energy scanning is utilized, with different proportions of two x-ray energy ranges available for different parts of the image.