Quantitative ultrasound yields biomarkers of bone mechanical competence

The last two decades have witnessed changes in our ability to assess multi-scale mechanical properties of the human skeleton. Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) has played a critical role in this development, providing gains in bone mechanical status assessment, spanning the scales of bone organization ranging from elementary bone structural units to the mm-scale level. QUS technologies can help in characterizing the anisotropic stiffness ex vivo and are prone to provide answers to some questions that remain open regarding the determinants of bone elastic properties. On the other side, in vivo QUS has potential to assess important bone quality factors such as material properties or structure, and to enhance fracture risk prediction