Calcified Tissue International 9 1991 Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Ultrasound Transmission Measurements Through the Os Calcis

Summary. A method of measuring ultrasonic propagation i the os calcis was devised for assessing bone properties in humans. Speed-of-sound (SOS) and broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA) were measured using broadband acoustic pulses transmitted and received by a pair of focused trans-ducers. The transducers are mounted coaxially in a water tank with the subject's heel in between. Reproducibility of results in an adult male was 10 % for the BUA and 1.2 % for the SOS. Both SOS and BUA changed when the transmis-sion path through the os calcis was varied. For a population of normal male subjects, SOS and BUA were correlated with densitometry esults on the os calcis, but less well correlated to area density at remote sites