Comparison of different methods for the preparation of porous bone substitution materials and structural investigations by synchrotron μ-computer tomography

The preparation of porous biomaterials for bone substitution is an important clinical issue in current biomedical technology because the ingrowth of bone can only occur if a suitable number of sufficiently large pores is available. Different procedures are compared here: The combined chemical-thermal treatment of bovine and human cancellous bone, the calcination of bovine cancellous bone, mechanical hole-drilling, and the extraction of porogens (in this case: salt crystals). The inner structure and the porosity of all samples were studied using high-resolution synchrotron mu-computer tomography.