Determination of the parameters of cancellous bone using high frequency acoustic measurements

The Biot model is widely used to model poroelastic media. Several authors have tested its applicability to cancellous bone, but to do so requires a priori estimation of the parameters of the Biot model, which is an uncertain and expensive endeavor. The question this article addresses is whether the sort of experiments described by these authors in fact can be used to determine the parameters of the Biot model. A method of computing acoustic pressure in the low 100 kHz range is developed. A parameter recovery algorithm which uses parallel processing is developed and tested. It is found that when it is assumed that the agreement between calculated and measured data is about two digits, porosity can be determined to within about 1-2% and permeability, pore size and the bulk moduli to within about 40%.