Advanced Microstructural Characterizations of Some Biomaterials and Scaffolds for Regenerative Orthopaedics

In the last decades, very significant advances have been made for what concerns bone and joint substitution and in the repair and regeneration of bone defects. Though some strong requirements are still to be met, biomaterials for these purposes have known an impressive evolution, for what concerns their mechanical behaviour, their bioresorbability and finally their capability to generate new bone tissue in a stable way in long periods. The validation of such materials necessarily depends on a suitable characterization of their properties. In this article a brief review of some works in this field, carried out by the authors’ research group, is presented. It was shown in particular how advanced experimental methods, such as synchrotron radiation µCT and synchrotron radiation diffraction can offer very important information, can be not only complementary methods to more standard techniques (electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction), but can also offer the possibility to measure parameters that cannot be obtained otherwise.