A workforce of College of California, Berkeley researchers has developed a “digital stress check” for CT-based evaluation of bone mineral density (BMD) in an analysis for osteoporosis.
Tony Keaveny, PhD, of the College of California, Berkeley.
The expertise’s improvement is well timed, because the U.S. Preventive Providers Process Pressure (USPSTF) is presently reviewing its 2018 steerage for osteoporosis screening, lead researcher Tony Keaveny, PhD, of Berkeley BioMechanics Laboratory, advised AuntMinnie.com. Presently, the duty power does not advocate osteoporosis screening for males, despite the fact that males maintain one-third of all hip fractures and that drug remedy for the situation in males is as efficient as it’s in ladies.
Keaveny discusses the advantages of BCT, particularly for males, who are sometimes underassessed for osteoporosis.
“Hip fractures are traumatic occasions — in truth, the mortality charge for males after a hip fracture is as excessive as 20%,” he mentioned.
Keaveny’s workforce started to develop the expertise, described as biomechanical CT (BCT) referred to as VirtuOst, within the early 2000s below the auspices of a startup agency, O.N. Diagnostics. In 2018 O.N. Diagnostics secured a Present Procedural Terminology (CPT) code for the check, which permits it to be lined by Medicare, Keaveny mentioned.
VirtuOst’s expertise is a collaboration between engineering and medication: it makes use of engineering ideas to measure bone power from CT exams of the hip or backbone initially taken for an additional indication. It produces bone power measurements, a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA)-equivalent BMD T-score on the hip, and a volumetric BMD evaluation of trabecular bone on the backbone; based mostly on the outcomes, a affected person’s doctor can establish osteoporosis and assess fracture threat with out the necessity for a DEXA examination or additional CT imaging.
Keaveny explains how BCT expertise works.
“BCT is especially well-suited to opportunistic use for the affected person and not using a current DEXA who’s present process or has beforehand undergone CT testing (together with hip or backbone areas) for an unrelated medical situation,” Keaveny’s group famous.
Picture courtesy of Tony Keaveny, PhD.
A key profit to the expertise is that it doesn’t impart additional radiation, in line with Keaveny. Physicians ship O.N. Diagnostics readers — who’re largely engineers — the CT findings and are billed quarterly for the studies.
Keaveny describes how BCT checks are learn.
“VirtuOst is physics-based evaluation of CT knowledge, and the outcomes are definitive,” Keaveny advised AuntMinnie.com.
O.N. Diagnostics plans to submit additional clearance paperwork to the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) this 12 months to increase the expertise to incorporate muscle and mushy tissue appraisal.
“Our new model has much more potential past bone mineral density analysis,” Keaveny mentioned. “It contains muscle and mushy tissue evaluation and has even larger sensitivity and specificity.”
Keaveny’s workforce’s 2020 report on VirtuOst will be discovered right here.
