Osteoporosis is a very common disease in which the bones become weak and easily break. Besides the serious impact on a person’s health and quality of life, osteoporosis results in important costs for society. The current diagnosis considers the bone quantity, as evaluated by bone mineral density assessments, and the clinical risk factors, but cannot take into account the bone quality, defined as the structural soundness of the trabecular arrangement. An approach based on the numerical modeling of the behavior of bone architectures, acquired by planar radiograms in the proximal phalanges of the non-dominant hand, has been developed at the University of Trieste. The Bone Structure Index, BSI, summarizes the simulations results for the purpose of bone quality ranking in the clinical evaluation. In this work, we discuss the preliminary design of a portable low dose x-ray scanner intended to be used as a low cost, user-friendly device for imaging the trabecular pattern and for providing a radiogram suitable for BSI evaluation. As an example, two cases in which the chosen device is used to evaluate the BSI are also reported.
