Using an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, scientists at ETH Zurich and the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory have demonstrated an extensive simulation of real human bone structures, providing doctors with a ‘high-definition’ view of fragility or strength of bones they never had before. This could lead to better clinical tools to improve the diagnosis and treatment of the bone disease osteoporosis.

Today, osteoporosis is diagnosed by measuring bone mass and density using specialised x-ray or computer tomography techniques. Studies have shown however, that bone mass measurements are only a moderately accurate way to determine the strength of the bone because bones are not solid structures.

Aiming for an accurate, powerful and fast method to automate the analysis of bone strength, scientists at the Departments of Mechanical and Process Engineering and Computer Science at ETH Zurich teamed up with the supercomputer team at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory. The breakthrough method they developed combines density measurements with a large-scale mechanical analysis of the inner-bone microstructure.

Using large-scale, massively parallel simulations, the researchers were able to obtain a dynamic ‘heat map’ of strain, which changes with the load applied to the bone. This map shows the clinician exactly where and under what load a bone is likely to fracture.

Dr Costas Bekas, part of IBM’s computational sciences team, explained: “Knowing when and where a bone is likely to fracture, a clinician can also detect osteoporotic damage more precisely and, by adjusting a surgical plate appropriately, can determine its optimal location.”

Utilising the capabilities of the 8-rack IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, the research team was able to conduct the first simulations on a 5 by 5mm specimen of real bone. In just 20 minutes of computing time, the supercomputer simulation generated 90 Gigabytes of output data.

Dr Alessandro Curioni, computational sciences group manager predicted: “Ten years from now, the performance of today’s supercomputers will become available in desktop systems, making such simulations of bone strength a routine practice in computer tomography.”

In future work, IBM and ETH scientists aim to advance their simulation techniques to go beyond the calculation of static bone strength and to be able to simulate the actual formation of the fractures for individual patients, thereby taking another step towards achieving a fast, reliable and early detection of people with a high fracture risk.