Med Phys
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Multimodal microimaging in preclinical models is used to examine the effect of spinal metastases on bony structure; however, the evaluation of tumor burden and its effect on microstructure has thus far been mainly qualitative or semiquantitative. Quantitative analysis of multimodality imaging is a time consuming task, motivating automated methods. As such, this study aimed to develop a low complexity semiautomated multimodal μCT/μMR based approach to segment rat vertebral structure affected by mixed osteolytic/osteoblastic destruction. ⋯ This semiautomated segmentation method yielded accurate registration of μCT and μMRI modalities with application to the development of mathematical models analyzing the mechanical stability of metastatically involved vertebrae and in preclinical applications evaluating new and existing treatment effects on tumor burden and skeletal microstructure.