title: Reducing temperature influence on dry quantitative ultrasound bone assessment with constant temperature control.
abstract: Nowadays, ultrasonic bone assessment is increasingly being used to assess bone status. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to enhance the precision of ultrasonic bone assessment by reducing the influence of temperature in a dry, gel coupled transducer system. A warm airflow generator was designed to make the measurement temperature constant (35±1°C). Thirty people were recruited for the evaluation of in-vivo performance. The short-term precision was performed 10 times with repositioning during a consecutive measurement session within 20min. It was expressed as root-mean square average of coefficient of variation, which is abbreviated for CV(RMS). The CV(RMS) was 3.84% for broadband ultrasound attenuation, and 0.30% for speed of sound. The Pearson correlations between gel coupled transducer system and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) were 0.808 (p<0.001) for broadband ultrasound attenuation, and 0.586 (p<0.005) for speed of sound. The result showed the high performance of reproducibility and the significant (p<0.005) correlations with DEXA in the dry, gel coupled transducer system.
authors: Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, Anhui, China.
authors: Yan-Yan
authors: YY
authors: Chen
authors: Yu-Bing
authors: YB
authors: Xu
authors: Li-Kui
authors: LK
authors: Zhan
authors: Zu-Chang
authors: ZC
authors: Ma
authors: Yi-Ning
authors: YN
authors: Sun
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000388:Air; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006813:Humidity; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013696:Temperature; D014159:Transducers; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods