Direct Comparison of Unenhanced and Contrast-Enhanced CT for Opportunistic Proximal Femur Bone Mineral Density Measurement: Implications for Osteoporosis Screening

Objective: For patients undergoing contrast-enhanced CT examinations that include the proximal femur, an opportunity exists for concurrent screening bone mineral density (BMD) measurement. We investigated the effect of IV contrast enhancement on CT-derived x-ray absorptiometry areal BMD measurement.

Materials and methods: Our cohort included 410 adults (mean age, 65.3 ± 10.0 years; range, 49-95 years) who underwent split-bolus CT urography at 120 kVp. Areal femoral neck BMD in g/cm(2) was measured on both unenhanced and contrast-enhanced CT series with asynchronous phantom calibration. Constant offset and multiplicative factor corrections for the contrast-enhanced series were derived from the Bland-Altman plot linear regression slopes.

Results: Mean unenhanced and contrast-enhanced areal femoral neck BMD values were 0.681 ± 0.118 and 0.713 ± 0.123 g/cm(2), respectively. The SD of the distribution of residuals for the constant offset and multiplicative model corrections were 0.0232 and 0.0231, respectively. The constant offset correction associated with contrast enhancement was 0.032 ± 0.023 g/cm(2), which corresponds to 0.29 ± 0.21 T-score units using the CT-derived x-ray absorptiometry young normal areal femoral neck BMD reference SD of 0.111 g/cm(2).

Conclusion: For the purposes of opportunistic osteoporosis screening, contrast-enhanced abdominopelvic CT studies are equivalent to unenhanced CT and can therefore be used for femoral neck BMD assessment. This measure could greatly enhance osteoporosis screening.