Evaluation of bone mineral density loss using an X-ray powder diffractometer and synchrotron radiation at LNLS—Brazil

X-ray coherent scattering can be attractive for noninvasive quantification and to provide complementary information to discriminate between cortical and trabecular bone tissue. Both laboratory X-ray source and synchrotron have been used in the study of the potential application of scattering information for imaging of mineral content in bone. Initially, a powder diffractometer was used. The scattering profiles were obtained using a Shimadzu DRX 6000 diffractometer at the Nuclear Instrumentation Laboratory, Brazil. The second coherent X-ray scattering measurements were carried out at the X-Ray Diffraction (XRD1) beamline located at the D12A bending-magnet port at the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) in Campinas, Brazil. The results obtained on the two machines are compared to each other. For both experiments, a good agreement can be seen between the bone calibration curves plotted. Although the data obtained from both machines were produced with the same statistical uncertainty, the acquisition time using synchrotron radiation was about 10 times smaller.