This study investigated changes of mechanical characteristics of the trabecular and cortical bone in the lumbar vertebrae of the ovariectomised (OVX) rat. In previous researches, there were many studies for morphology of osteoporotic bones based on Micro-Computed Tomography (Micro-CI'), However, there were few studies for detecting and tracking changes of mechanical characteristics of the trabecular and cortical bone in the lumbar vertebrae of the OVX rat. For this study, the 4th lumbar of the OVX rat (female Sprague-Dawley) was utilized as a specimen. An OVX rat was scanned at week 0 Oust before surgery), at week 4, and week 8 after surgery. Micro-finite element (μ-FE) analysis was used to investigate mechanical characteristics of the trabecular and cortical bone in the lumbar vertebrae for an OVX rat. When the OVX rat (at week 8) was compared with the OVX rat (at week 0), the structural modulus of cortical and trabecualr bone was decreased by 52％ and 99％, respectively. This study showed the change of mechanical characteristics of cortical bone as well as trabecular bone of an OVX rat. Detecting and tracking changes of mechanical characteristics could greatly contribute to an experiment test for the trabecular and cortical bone in the lumbar vertebrae of an OVX rat by using In-vivo Micro-CT.
