This lacelike pattern is made from a hard substance that has turned as fragile as fabric. Norman Barker, an associate professor of pathology and art as applied to medicine at Johns Hopkins University, took this photograph of the femur of a woman between the ages of 45 and 50 with osteoporosis. It shows cancellous, or spongy, bone, the network of interconnected spicules that form inside a bone’s stronger outer layers. Cancellous bone provides the framework on which bone marrow cells grow and also makes essential minerals available to the body. In osteoporosis, the spaces between the spicules start to get bigger, “and this awakening of the bone leads to fractures,” Barker says. Using new software tools, he stitched multiple images together to create an unlimited depth of focus for a better look at how osteo­porosis ravages the body. “This type of image would have been impossible to capture just a couple of years ago,” Barker notes.

This article was originally published with the title What Is It?.

3 Comments

1. 1. tharriss 08:25 AM 6/3/11

   It is amazing how quickly things are advancing is so many different fields... it seems like every day I see an article somewhere about some advance that would have been impossible just a short while ago.
   
   Sometimes it seems to me like a race between our advancing capabilities/knowledge, and our overpopulation/destruction of the planet. I bet this period in history will be interesting to study a few hundred years from now.

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2. 2. jtdwyer 09:08 AM 6/3/11

   It's remarkable how similar this structure is to the inferred 'cosmic web'. To the extent that the 'cosmic web' accurately reflects very large scale structure in the universe, perhaps it is similarly develops - "the spaces between the [localized mass] start to get bigger..."

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3. 3. dudleybrooks 03:58 PM 6/3/11

   jtdwyer: Then let's hope that the universe doesn't fall down and break itself! ;^)

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