A preliminary study of thoracic CT screening combined with quantitative CT for the determination of bone density in the thoracic spine

Objective To explore the diagnostic value of thoracic spine bone density in QCT bone density measurement. Methods The CT imaging data of 149patients whose thoracic CT examinations included the whole thoracic spine and lumbar spine(L1-L3) were retrospectively analysed, and the paired～sample t ～test in SPSS25.0 statistical software was applied to analyse and compare the inter～vertebral bone mineral density; and the distribution characteristics of thoracic spine BMD were compared between different genders using the independent～sample t～test. Results Thoracic spine BMD decreased gradually from cephalad to pedicle. The trend of thoracic spine BMD was decreasing at different ages. Comparison of the mean values of BMD between thoracic spine(T1-T12) and lumbar spine(L1-L3) were statistically significant ( P < 0.05). The comparison of the mean BMD values of different vertebrae combinations with the mean BMD values of lumbar spine(L1-L3) was statistically significant ( P < 0.05). Comparison of thoracic vertebral bone density between genders was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). Conclusion Thoracic BMD has a pattern of gradual decrease from cephalad to pedicle, which is suggestive for predicting osteoporosis, but it is not feasible to diagnose osteoporosis directly using the diagnostic criteria of lumbar BMD for thoracic BMD.