Endocrine Abstracts

Osteoporosis causes bones to become weak, porous and fracture more easily. While a vertebral fracture is the archetypal fracture of osteoporosis, it is also the most difficult to diagnose clinically. Patients often suffer further spine or other fractures, deformity, height loss and pain before diagnosis. There were an estimated 520, 000 fragility fractures in the UK in 2017 (costing È4.5 billion), a figure set to increase 30% by 2030. One way to improve both vertebral fracture identification and the diagnosis of osteoporosis is to assess a patient’s bones during routine Computed Tomography (CT) scans, often done for monitoring of endocrine conditions. Patients attend routine CT for diagnosis and monitoring of various endocrine conditions, but the skeleton can be overlooked as radiologists concentrate on the primary reason for scanning. More than half a million CT scans done each year in the NHS could potentially be screened for osteoporosis (increasing 5% annually). Several companies have developed software methods to diagnose osteoporosis/ fragile bone strength and/or identify vertebral fractures in CT datasets, using various methods that include image processing, computational modelling, artificial intelligence and biomechanical engineering concepts. These and other methodologies of interest to the endocrinologist will be evaluated in the session.