Bone Formation in vivo due to Mechanical Stimulation and its Evaluation

In this paper, we apply stress stimulation to a rabbit's tibia under the same conditions as the previous paper using an improved apparatus in which the applied load is measured and controlled automatically by a personal computer. We apply not only compressive load but tensile load to the rabbit's tibia in order to clarify the difference in the influence on bone formation. The bone formation around the circular defect is estimated accurately by using a image processing technique. We discuss the relationship between the bone apposition and stress stimulation quantitatively from the experimental result. Furthermore, the computer simulation of the bone apposition in the experiment is carried out using an algorithm based on the theory of time-dependent bone remodeling proposed by Beaupre' et al. and the effectiveness of the theory is discussed compared with the experimental results.