title: Technical note: an R program for automating bone cross section reconstruction.
abstract: Many recent studies have used long bone cross-sectional geometric properties in various comparative analyses. Methods have been described for reconstructing diaphyseal cross sections from external molds and biplanar radiographs that produce accurate results (within 5% of true values on average). The manual image processing required, however, is both time and labor intensive. A new freely available program developed here for the computational freeware, R, automates much of the process. This study compares cross-sectional properties calculated using the new R program to those from peripheral quantitative CT (pQCT) and the original manual method. We find that the R program works aswell as the original manual image processing for most cross sections eliminates the chance for entry errors at several steps and greatly speeds up data collection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig D-04103, Germany. adam.sylvester@eva.mpg.de
authors.forename: Adam D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Sylvester
authors.forename: Evan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Garofalo
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ruff
mesh_terms: D005269:Femur / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D011859:Radiography; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012984:Software; D013977:Tibia / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging