The non-intrusiveness and low cost of ultrasonic interrogation is motivating the development of new means of detection of osteoporosis and other bone deficiencies. Bone is a porous media saturated with a viscous fluid and could thus be well characterized by the Biot model. The main purpose of this work is to present an in vitro methodology for the identification of the properties and structural parameters of the bone, adopting a statistical Bayesian inference technique using ultrasonic reflected signals at normal incidence. It is, in this respect, a companion paper to a previous work [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 146, 3 (2019), pp. 1629–1640], where ultrasonic transmitted signals were considered. This approach allows the retrieval of some important parameters that characterize the bone structure and associated uncertainties. The method was applied to seven samples of bone extracted from femoral heads, immersed in water, and exposed to ultrasonic signals with a center frequency of $\approx 500\hspace{0.17em}\mathrm{kHz}$. For all seven samples, signals at different sites were acquired to check the method robustness. The porosity, pore mean size and standard deviation, and the porous frame bulk modulus were all successfully identified using only ultrasonic reflected signals.

中文翻译：

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利用超声反射信号对人体骨骼样本特性进行贝叶斯推断

超声询问的非侵入性和低成本正促使人们开发出检测骨质疏松症和其他骨骼缺陷的新方法。骨是一种充满粘性流体的多孔介质，因此可以用Biot模型很好地表征。这项工作的主要目的是提出一种体外方法，用于鉴定骨骼的特性和结构参数，采用统计贝叶斯推理技术，该技术使用垂直入射的超声反射信号。在这方面，它是以前工作的随笔[J. co Soc。上午。146，3（2019），pp。1629–1640]，其中考虑了超声波传输信号。这种方法允许检索一些表征骨结构和相关不确定性的重要参数。该方法适用于从股骨头中提取的七个骨头样本，将其浸入水中，并暴露于中心频率为的超声信号中。$\approx 500\hspace{0.17em}\mathrm{千赫}$。对于所有七个样本，获取了不同位置的信号以检查方法的鲁棒性。仅使用超声反射信号就可以成功识别出孔隙率，平均孔径和标准偏差以及多孔框架的体积模量。