Modificarea texturii trabeculare la populatia feminina varstnica, evidentiata prin analiza fractala pe radiografia calcaneului

Cancellous bone texture of the calcaneus in elderly women measured by fractal analysis on radigraphsCancellous bone texture was studied on calcaneus's radiographs from women in order to identify trabecular micro-architecturechanges attributable to advanced age, compared to the peri- and postmenopausal period. Two sets of 12 X-rays, digitalized with adigital camera, were compared using multifractal analysis on binarized images and 4 different fractal dimensions (FD) computed on greyscale images. The results were subjected to ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis, by measuring AUC (AreaUnder the Curve). Classification of the X-rays was attempted, using k-nn (k-nearest neighbour) supervised classification algorithms.Statistically significant lower values of FD, were found with both methods for the advanced age group. Fractal analysis applied to greyscale images and ROC analysis proved more successful in identifying the X-rays.