Feasibility of assessing neonate bone status by using ultrasonic apparent integrated backscatter parameter

Using ultrasound to evaluate the bone development of neonates is very important.The feasibility of evaluating the bone development was studied in this paper by using ultrasonic backscatter signal.Ultrasonic apparent integrated backscatter (AIB) coefficient was introduced to assess the cancellous bone status of the neonates.The correlations between AIB and weight, AIB and birth days of the neonates in different ultrasonic frequency were studied. The results showed that AIB of the term infants is apparently higher than that of premature infants and it has little correlation with the weight; while the AIB of the premature infants was highly correlated with the birth days (R = 0.633). Therefore,using ultrasonic backscatter signal and AIB coefficient has the potential to evaluate the cancellous bone developmentof the neonates.