JABFM

J Appl Biomater Funct Mater 2015; 13(3): e195-e200

DOI: 10.5301/jabfm.5000175

eISSN 2280-8000 ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Determination of the mechanical properties of lumbar

porcine vertebrae with 2D digital image correlation
Juan Pablo Campos-López1,2, Ariel Fuerte-Hernández1, Luis Héctor Hernández-Gómez1, Amalia Martínez-García3,
Juan Alfonso Beltrán-Fernández1, Guillermo Urriolagoitia-Calderón1
1
Postgraduate and Research Section, ESIME ZAC, National Polytechnic Institute, Federal District - Mexico
2
Polytechnic University of the Valley of Mexico, Mexico State - Mexico
3
Center for Research in Optics, Léon, Guanajuato - Mexico

Abstract
Purpose: To evaluate the strain fields and to calculate the modulus of elasticity and Poisson’s ratio of trabecular
bone of the 6 lumbar vertebrae of the porcine spine by a 2-dimensional digital image correlation (2D DIC).
Methods: This study was performed through a 2D DIC technique and the specimens were tested under compres-
sion. The resulting images were analyzed numerically by 2D DIC. Then, representative regions of interest were
examined. The strain fields were determined and stress-strain curves were obtained.
Results: The full field measurement of the strain in the lumbar bone spine was evaluated and with this data, the
Young�s modulus and Poisson�s ratio were determined.
Conclusions: This research highlights the potential applications of noninvasive acquisition techniques in biomechani-
cal analysis. This is useful in the mechanical characterization of bony structures and in the design of prostheses.
Keywords: Digital image correlation, Trabecular bone, Elastic properties, Field measurements

Introduction
Different experimental techniques for exploring mechani-
cal features exhibited by animals in vitro and in vivo have
been developed. In certain cases, the intention is to under-
stand the biomechanical behavior of the human spine (1-2).
The knowledge of normal conditions of the human spine is an
essential starting point for a better understanding of numer-
ous pathologies and injuries. To achieve this goal, the ana-
tomical analogy between quadrupeds and bipeds has been
studied by different authors (3-6). There are also mechanical
tests that compare composite materials and natural bone,
which can solve orthopedic disorders (7). The relationships be-
tween the 2 specimens allow results to be extrapolated from
1 kind to another. For instance, the pork spine exhibits a large
morphological and biomechanical similarity with the human
spine (8-10). One of these similarities is the orientation on the
arrangement of the trabecular morphology, which indicates
according to Wolff�s law (11) that the applied loads over the
vertebral body are similar. This is in accordance with densitom-
Accepted: April 29, 2013
Published online: August 5, 2015
Corresponding author:
Juan Pablo Campos-López
21-A, Bosque de Monrovia
Nezahualcóyotl
Estado de México 57170, México
campos_juan_pablo@yahoo.com
etry studies that validate this fact (12). Therefore, porcine mod-
els have been a good choice for predicting results related to
human cases in several reported studies (13-14).
The mechanical behavior of trabecular bone primarily
depends on 3 parameters: the structure formed by its cells,
the solid volume fraction, and the material properties in the
cell wall (15). It is a porous body that displays viscoelastic and
anisotropic behavior, and these features complicate its study,
making it advisable to assume some simplifications. To achieve
this objective, there are diverse mechanical tests to determine
the mechanical properties of trabecular bone (16-18). Some
experimental works give punctual results but they cannot de-
scribe the behavior of the whole body. Because most of the nu-
merical analysis of the spine visualizes it as a continuous body
and frequently as a homogeneous media, many researchers
have chosen to obtain the properties at a macro level. It is
reported in the literature that there are strong variations in
the mechanical properties of porcine and human specimens
(19-23). Nevertheless, most of the authors agree regarding the
inherent properties of the specimens; moreover, experimental
procedures greatly influence the fluctuations in these results.
Characteristics such as race, age, weight, size, morphology,
possible diseases, injuries, time of post-mortem testing, and
storage in different media before experimentation could have
an effect on the resulting evaluations.
On the other hand, the 2D DIC technique has proven to
be an efficient method for calculating deformations on flat
specimens. Multiple applications have been developed in
experimental mechanics fields for this purpose. Scientific re-
search associated with mechanical structures and material

© 2015 Wichtig Publishing

e196
characterization has been performed using this technique
because the displacement and strain fields can be analyzed
without any contact with the specimen. With these objec-
tives in mind, this work focuses on the identification of the
mechanical properties for describing some global and local
aspects of the entire surface of a sample. It was decided to
use 2D DIC to determine the Young’s modulus and Poisson’s
ratio. Of note, his noncontact optical method seems to be an
ideal candidate to describe deformation in the porcine tra-
becular bone of the vertebral column.
Theoretical basis of 2D DIC
2D DIC can be defined as the search for a point p(x, y) in an
undeformed image, from a point p′( x ′, y ′) in a deformed im-
age. This optical method compares images to obtain defor-
mation measurements without any contact with the body.
This advantage eliminates invasiveness from the experi-
ment and it requires low cost equipment in comparison with
interferometric techniques like electronic speckle pattern
interferometry (ESPI) or digital holographic interferometry
(DHI).
Since the discretized value of p(x, y) can be repeated con-
sistently in the distorted image, a small square subset with
center in p(x, y) and dimensions of (2M +1) * (2M +1) is chosen
to find a solution. The reference subset is known as f(x, y) and
the deformed subset is named g( xi ′ , yi ′ ). In order to evaluate
the similarity between the 2 subsets, a criterion or correla-
tion functions are used. For this latter purpose, the zero-nor-
malized sum of squared differences (ZNSSD) was considered.
It is defined as
M M  f (x ,y ) – f g( xi ′ , y j ′ ) – gm 
C= ∑ ∑  i j m
∆f
−
i =– M j =– M
 
1 M M M
where fm =
(2M +1) 2 ∑ ∑ f (x , y ) , ∆f = ∑ ∑ [ f ( x , y ) – f
i i
i =– M j =– M
and so on. When C ≈ 0, it can be said that f(xi, yi) ≈ g( xi ′ , yi ′ ) ,
and the difference between p(x, y) and p′( x ′, y ′) will define
the displacement vector in the deformed images. The prob-
lem is then reduced to finding the minimum of equation 1
for obtaining the components of displacement u and v. In the
literature, a large number of possibilities for determining the
minimum of this function are shown and an extensive review
of these methods can be found in (24). For this work, the
Newton Raphson method was chosen and implemented in a
MATLAB software, as proposed by (25) and improved by (26),
to determine the deformation in the vertebral bodies ana-
lyzed. The calculation time to reach a solution is shorter than
other correlation algorithms. Moreover, it can be considered
that the deformation of the subset g( xi ′ , yi ′ ) allows the mea-
surement of larger deformations.
Assuming that the deformed body behaves under the
principles of a continuum solid, it is possible to say that the
relationship between x to x′ and y to y′ is
x ′ = x + ξd
y ′ = y + ηd ,
Mechanical properties of lumbar porcine
where ξd and ηd are polynomials of degree d. Since complex
deformations are likely to be found in trabecular bone, it is
convenient to use second-order polynomials. In this way, it is
possible to describe a more convoluted pattern of deforma-
tions (27). When d = 2, equation 2 becomes
x ′ = x + u + ux ∆x + uy ∆y +1 / 2uxx ∆x 2 +1 / 2uyy ∆y 2 + uxy ∆x ∆y
y ′ = y + v + v x ∆x + v y ∆y +1 / 2v xx ∆x 2 +1 / 2v yy ∆y 2 + v xy ∆x ∆y ,
 Eq. [3]
where, ux = ∂u / ∂x , uy = ∂u / ∂y and ∆x = xi - xo, etc. These
values are the argument of the correlation function (1), and
is defined by
P = {u, v , ux , v x , uxx , v xx , uyy , v yy , uxy , v xy } . Eq. [4]
In a next step, a P that satisfies C(P) ≈ 0 is sought. The
iteration process of equation 5 is performed until the limit
of convergence is reached and an optimal P has been found.
P k +1 = P k - ∇∇C (P k )-1 ∇C (P k ).  Eq. [5]
To reach a subpixel resolution, it is necessary to recon-
struct the deformed images from pixel integer values. In this
work, bicubic splines were used for the interpolation of the
deformed images through equation 6:
3 3
I( x , y ) = ∑ ∑ aij x i y i ,  Eq. [6]
i =0 j =0
To ensure the performance of the programmed routines
in MATLAB, a comparative experimental test was carried out
in order to calculate the deformation of a well-known sample.
This validates the proposed algorithm that is used in calibra-
∆g
 , Eq. [1]

tion of the acquired data. A tension test was conducted with
a universal Instron-8500 machine (Norwood, MA, USA). The
specimens were manufactured with 304L stainless steel and
M an axial clip on an extensometer of 50 mm to 75 mm, adher-
i i m
]2 , ing to a resolution of 0.0001 mm. This transducer acquired
i =– M j =– M
the deformation data. The test was executed with a crosshead
velocity of 2.5 mm/min. Images were taken with an 8-bit Sony
CCD camera (model GN258DNF; Sony, Tokyo, Japan), with
continuous diffusive illumination provided by an LED source
installed at 1.25 m from the grips of the machine. A Computar
Zoom lens with varifocal length 18 mm to 108 mm was em-
ployed (Computar, Commack, NY, USA). The images were de-
tected at 1 Hz and the resulting curve obtained by 2D DIC and
the extensometer are compared in Figure 1A; additionally the
resultant strain field is plotted in Figure 1B.
Figure 1A shows that the different techniques obtain re-
sults that are in perfect agreement, giving an average strain
error of 0.0016, a standard deviation (SD) of 0.0034, and an
average relative error of 3.78%. The stress-strain curves of
porcine specimens were obtained with these confidence lim-
its (CL). In addition, the Young’s modulus E and the compres-
sive Poisson’s ratio were determined.
Material and methods
Three spines of different pigs were chosen. Their race
Eq. [2] was Pietrain and they weighed around 95 kg. They were
© 2015 Wichtig Publishing
Campos-López et al e197

A B

Fig. 1 - Strain in a 304 L stainless steel target. (A) Comparison between 2D DIC and extensometer data; (B) strain field in the specimen sub-
jected to 31 kN.

approximately 7 months old. After the animals were sacri-

ficed, they were refrigerated for 24 h at a temperature below
2°C. Having undertaken this process, 18 prismatic specimens
of 12 x 12 x 15 mm were taken from the L1 to L6 vertebrae.
It is necessary to chose prismatic specimens to implement
2D DIC, because the surface of the object to study must be
flat and parallel to the camera sensor. One side of the speci-
men was painted with a layer of white paint. Then, random
points of black paint were sprayed to attain a unique pat-
tern to correlate the surface. At the end of this preparation,
the specimens were tested in a universal machine (MTS 858
Table Top System; MTS, Eden Prairie, MN, USA), with a capac-
ity of 15 kN. The crosshead speed was 2 mm/min, and an ap-
proximately 30-N preload was applied. The period between
obtaining the specimens and testing them was not greater
than 8 h. To record the deformation of the compression test,
the optical setup shown in Figure 2 was employed. A diffuse,
Fig. 2 - Experimental setup.
white light illumination was used together with an 8-bit CCD
camera, equipped with an 18 mm-to-108 mm zoom lens and
a resolution of 754 x 480 pixels, at a distance of 60 cm from
the specimen. This distance was optimized to minimize the
errors introduced by out-of-plane deformation. The sampling
frequency of the load, the crosshead distance, and the image
acquisition were set at 2 Hz.

Determination of mechanical properties

Different regions of interest (ROI) were chosen in order to

determine the stress-strain curves. Figure 3 shows a typical
ROI that was selected. Within this area, measurement points
were generated at an interval of 5 pixels to find the displace-
ment fields u, v. The size of the square subset to evaluate the
correlation coefficient was 31 pixels per side.
It has been previously indicated that changes in the inten-
sity and poor interpolation algorithms (28) as well as the out-
of-plane displacement (29), the convergence of the method,
or the heating of the electronic systems introduce errors or Fig. 3 - ROI of the compression test.

© 2015 Wichtig Publishing

e198 Mechanical properties of lumbar porcine

A B

Fig. 4 - Displacement u in a lumbar specimen. (A) Raw displacement; (B) smooth displacement.

noise into the displacement field as shown in Figure 4A. A

simple but effective way to reduce this noise is proposed by
Pan et al (30): the ROI is approximated by small linear plane
subsection functions with equation 7. Figure 4B illustrates the
smoothed displacement field within a square window size of
17 elements per side.

us (i , j) = a0 + a1 x + a2 y
, Eq. [7]
v s (i , j) = b0 + b1 x + b2 y

Another important advantage of this method is that the

displacement field is derived without the need for subsequent
numerical derivation. This process is advantageous because it
avoids the numerical derivation that has been considered an
inconvenient, noisy process in the calculated displacement
field (30).
Strains were calculated with the Lagrangian formula-
tion, because the analysis starts with the undeformed body
and it progresses to the deformed state, leaving the tensor Fig. 5 - Typical strain-stress curve from trabecular compression test.
strain as

ε =1 / 2 F T F -1  , Eq. [8] the elastic region, the points were fitted to a straight line
by the method of ordinary least squares (OLS). To calculate
where F stands for the deformation gradient tensor and it can the longitudinal Poisson’s ratio, the same procedure was
be expressed in terms of the derivatives of displacement as followed, by averaging the strain transverse to longitudinal
strain.
ux + 1 uy 
F =  . Eq. [9] Results and discussion
 vx v y + 1
Eighteen strain-stress curves were calculated for the por-
To compare the engineering strain obtained by our MTS cine specimens. Figure 5 shows a typical case in which these
system and the strain field measured by the 2D DIC method, curves show the strain obtained by 2D DIC, the linear ap-
it was applied the equation (10) which allows a direct com- proximation for the OLS, and its counterpart delivered by the
parison between both methods, MTS-858. The difference by the method of 2D DIC and strain
was estimated by the MTS system. In this case a higher diver-
ε ing = 1+ 2ε yy - 1 . Eq. [10] gence than in the case of steel was observed; however, it is
still within reasonable parameters. The strain average error in
By using the average strain of the ROI (Fig. 3) the stress- this analysis was 0.0018 with a standard deviation of 0.0122
strain curves of the 18 specimens were obtained. Within and a relative error of 16.36%.

© 2015 Wichtig Publishing

Campos-López et al
A B
Fig. 6 - Transversal and longitudinal strain for a load of 810 N. (A) εxxstrain; (B) εyystrain.
Poisson’s ratio was calculated with the longitudinal εyy
(Fig. 6A) and transversal εxx (Fig. 6B) strains. The evaluations
were performed within the elastic region to obtain the aver-
age Poisson’s ratio. This procedure was repeated in all cases
to calculate the average of E, υ and the standard deviation
among all. The results can be seen in Table I.
Important differences in the resulting parameters related
to mechanical properties of porcine trabecular bone have
been reported (19-22). Since experimental techniques used
for their determination are diverse, different agents could be
responsible for these significant variations. For instance, some
systems for measuring strain require being in direct physical
contact with the system, and it includes an additional param-
eter that must be taken into account regarding the physical
properties of the surroundings for each experiment. Addition-
ally, from punctual measurements, it is contemplated that
local results could be extended in order to give information
about the whole sample. The 2D DIC method shows an ad-
equate convergence for the calculation of Young’s modulus,
not only for particular measurements but for all the select-
ed areas that were studied. The consulted literature reports
Young’s modulus values within a range from 229 MPa to 1080
MPa, which is in good agreement with our reported average
value of about 252 MPa. The variation in our reported study
samples during the tests can be easily explained by inherent
features in the specimen, such as age, pathology, nutrition, its
conservation and storage, among others.
From the biomechanical point of view, an important topic
is the identification of the mechanical parameters of trabecu-
lar bone in vertebral bodies. This would be useful in further
research and would help to understand the behavior of the
spine under different types of load. From the obtained re-
sults, it can be observed that at similar levels of strain in the
trabecular bone, a large heterogeneity is exhibited in com-
parison with an isotropic material such as steel. When tra-
becular bone is considered as homogeneous in a numerical
analysis, reasonable approximations to reality are obtained.
It is now possible to develop finite element models with a
© 2015 Wichtig Publishing
e199
TABLE I - Average modulus E, ν, and standard deviation
Porcine L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6
vertebrae
E [MPa] 234.67 212.29 273.50 276.51 183.119 322.119
v 0.294 0.389 0.326 0.251 0.177 0.402
STD 112.35 85.54 146.45 107.19 65.09 219.45
great level of geometrical detail. However, its weak point is
that unlike interferometric techniques, the exact mechanical
properties of the material cannot be introduced in small re-
gions (31). Therefore, usually it is assumed that the mechani-
cal properties are homogeneous (32). This situation is more
complex when ceramic materials used as rehabilitation mate-
rials, for instance, are introduced into the required numerical
model (33).
Conclusions
Results of a sensitive, noncontact technique for a highly
accurate determination of biomechanical properties are pre-
sented in this work. An important topic in biomechanics is
the identification of the mechanical parameters of trabecular
bone for further investigation into the behavior of the spine
under different types of load. In this work it is demonstrated
that the 2D DIC method can be used to calculate the Young’s
modulus and the Poisson’s ratio for the trabecular bone of
the spine column without being in contact with the body. It
was also shown that this method can provide the behavior
of the entire specimen surface in compression. From the
presented results it can be observed that at similar levels of
strain in the trabecular bone a large heterogeneity is exhibit-
ed in comparison to an almost ideal material such as stainless
steel. However, this resulting feature is not too far from the
ideal model, indicating that numerical analysis considered as
e200
homogeneous trabecular bone can provide good approxima-
tions of reality.
Disclosures
Financial support: The authors would like to acknowledge the finan-
cial support they received from the National Council for Science and
Technology, the National Polytechnic Institute, the Center for Re-
search in Optics, the Polytechnic University of the Valley of Mexico,
and the Institute of Science and Technology of the Federal District.
Conflict of interest: None.
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