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First published online March 8, 2005
Journal of Experimental Biology 208, 899-905 (2005)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2005
doi: 10.1242/jeb.01475

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How does the relative wall thickness of human femora follow the biomechanical optima? An experimental study on mummies

Sándor Évinger¹, Bence Suhai², Balázs Bernáth², Balázs Gerics³, Ildikó Pap¹ and Gábor Horváth^2,*

¹ Department of Anthropology, Hungarian Natural History Museum, H-1083 Budapest, Ludovika tér 2, Hungary,
² Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös University, H-1117 Budapest, Pázmány Péter sétány 1, Hungary
³ Department of Anatomy and Histology, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Szent István University, H-1078 Budapest, István u. 2, Hungary

View larger version (60K): [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Representative radiographs of human femora in posterior and medial views from the three age groups (subadults, adults and old people). Rectangular areas demarcated by white line show the regions selected for evaluation. (A,B) Right femur of a 5 year old boy (catalogue number: MTM-ET 190) in posterior (Kmean=0.575) and medial (Kmean=0.636) view. (C,D) Left femur of a 48 year old woman (MTM-ET 256) in posterior (Kmean=0.461) and medial (Kmean=0.591) view. (E,F) Left femur of a 58 year-old man (MTM-ET 146) in posterior (Kmean=0.519) and medial (Kmean=0.678) view.

View larger version (31K): [in a new window]   Fig. 2. Frequency diagram of the values of the ratio K of the internal to external diameter of all investigated human femora from posterior (left diagram) and medial (right diagram) views. The Gaussian curves are fitted to the measured K-values. A vertical arrow shows the mean Kmean. Vertical lines represent the four theoretical optima KY, KS, KF, KI given in Table 1. There are fewer K-values for medial than for posterior view, because we could not evaluate the medial radiograph of a few subadult and old-people femora with osteoporosis (in the contrast-poor radiographs the bone walls could be recognized neither computationally, nor visually).

View larger version (30K): [in a new window]   Fig. 3. As Fig. 2 for adult femora (age between 21 and 50 years).