Osteoporosis is the most common bone disease. Measuring bone mineral density (BMD) by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is considered the gold standard of osteoporosis diagnosis. However, BMD's fracture prediction ability is only moderate. This joint proposal between the Kuopio University Hospital, University of Eastern Finland, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, The University of Manchester, UK and Lund University, Sweden, seeks to discover the role of soft tissue and previous fractures on fracture risk and investigate how deep learning techniques could use multiple radiological images and other medical information simultaneously to improve osteoporotic fracture risk prediction. Large datasets covering up to 100 000 patients will be collected for the project. This project has potential to improve fracture risk assessment using existing imaging facilities. Therefore, it may have an enormous impact on osteoporotic fracture prevention without increasing the costs to the healthcare system.

2023

2027