1. Bone and joint Imaging Group Adam Baxter-Jones (PA), Cathy Arnold, Philip Chilibeck, David Cooper, Petrus Gomes, Geoffrey Johnston, J.D. Johnston, Saija Kontulainen, Soo Kim, Angela Lieverse, Sheldon Wiebe RELEVANCE TO HUMAN HEALTH Millions of Canadians are afflicted by osteoporosis, arthritis and other diseases of the bones and joints that cause pain, disability and death. As our population ages, these bone health problems are becoming an increasing public health challenge. The Bone and joint Imaging Group (BIG) studies the factors that affect bone health, right from the womb and early childhood, through adolescence to adulthood and old age. The group draws on broad range of expertise, with membership from the U of S Colleges of Arts and Science, Dentistry, Engineering, Kinesiology, and Medicine and Saskatoon Health Region. BIG also draws upon a 17-year, long-term study of Saskatchewan children that allows the researchers to study how factors such as nutrition and exercise during critical growth periods such as adolescence affects bone strength in middle age. The group will harness the unparalleled imaging technologies of the Canadian Light Source synchrotron to look directly inside living bone. In the process, they will advance knowledge of how bone diseases develop, create new methods of early detection, and point the way to new ways to identify, prevent and treat bone and joint diseases. The BIG Group. Back row left to right: Petrus Gomes, Maria Copete, Karla Hoop, Sheldon Wiebe, David Cooper, Cathy Arnold, Angela Bowen, Jenny Basran, Saija Kontulainen. Second row left to right: Dean Chapman, Jon Farthing, Adam Baxter-Jones, J.D. Johnston, Bob Faulkner, Shawn Davidson, Hassanali Vatanparast. Front row left to right: Liz Harrison, Carol Rodgers, Corinna Nydegger, Soo Kim, Geoffrey Johnston ACKNOWLEDGMENT Matching funds from: Colleges of Medicine; Kinesiology; Dentistry ; Office of Vice President Research Recipient of a SHRF Research Group Development Grant IMAGING Bone fractures occurs when external forces applied to the bone exceed the bone strength and are most common at the wrist. Detection of wrist bone strength is a risk indicator for more debilitating fractures of the hip and spine in later life. Early detection of bone strength and its progression after fracture should enable targeted preventative strategies. One of the aims of BIG is to be at the forefront of intervention strategies during childhood and young and old adulthood to reduce fracture incidence. FRACTURES IMAGING Assessment of bone strength is challenging as current assessment relies on areal bone mineral density (aBMD) acquired by duel-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). However many fractures are unrelated to aBMD and require measures of bone microarchitecture. Another important aim of BIG is to deploy new and existing imaging technology to improve assessment of bone density and microarchitecture from (A) DXA to (B) to peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) to (C) Micro-CT and (D) Synchrotron Micro-CT. PROGRESS August 2009 Drs Cooper and Chapman successfully imaged the human distal radius with Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI) a synchrotron-based, x-ray imaging technique November 2009 Drs Baxter-Jones, Cooper and Johnston received CFI funding to purchase a high resolution pQCT September 2009 Drs Kontulainen, Baxter- Jones, Cooper, Johnston, Leswick & Vatanparast received a CIHR grant to reveal the role of adolescent growth, bone accrual and physical activity to adult bone strength at the wrist and hip