Combined estimation of thickness and velocities using ultrasound guided waves: a pioneering study on in vitro cortical bone samples

International audienceIn this paper, the issue of the determination of both thickness and elastic characteristics from the propagation of multiple Lamb waves on ex-vivo human long cortical bones is addressed. Prior to the measurements on bone, the method is validated on cortical bone-mimicking phantoms. The experimental setup was previously developed for clinical measurement and the multi-Lamb mode response is analyzed using the singular value decomposition signal processing method recently introduced in the field. The repeatability and the trueness of the estimated parameters on bone-mimicking phantoms were found around a few percent. Estimation of cortical thickness on bone samples was in good agreement with cortical thickness derived from high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography data analysis of the samples