Gaussian random field-based characterization and reconstruction of cancellous bone microstructure considering the constraint of correlation structure

The macro scale physical properties of cancellous bone materials are governed by the microstructural features, which is of great significance for the multi-scale research of cancellous bone and the inverse design of bone-mimicking materials. Therefore, it is essential to characterize the natural cancellous bone samples, and reconstruct the microstructures with the biomimetic osteointegration and mechanical properties. In this research, a novel approach for the characterization and reconstruction of cancellous bone was proposed, based on the medical image analysis and anisotropic three-dimensional Gaussian random field (GRF). The geometric similarity, i.e. the interface curvature distribution (ISD), was meticulously studied, which is important to the osteointegration ability. And the mechanical properties were validated by the stress-strain curves under the large compressive strain simulated by the smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) method. In addition, the effects of the generation parameters of GRF-based biomimetic microstructures on the apparent properties were analyzed. The ISD results demonstrated that both GRF and micro-CT groups had the similar columnar morphological properties, while the latter had more hyperbolic features. And it was found that the GRF-based biomimetic microstructures and the natural bone samples based on micro-CT (MCT) had the similar failure mode. The concordance correlation coefficient between MCT and GRF pairs was 0.8685, with a Pearson ρ value of 0.8804, and significance level p