On the Road to Personalized Medicine: Multiscale Computational Modeling of Bone Tissue

Personalized medicine is an emerging field, considered by many in the biomedical community to be among the upcoming approaches to medical treatment. To embrace this new challenge, physicians need a better understanding of the biological processes in the human body, as well as precise diagnostic tools and patient-specific treatments. In response, the last three decades have witnessed a major shift in tissue engineering development, from treating bone tissue at the macro-scale level only to treating it at complex multiscale levels. Researchers have begun striving for a better understanding of bone structure and mechanics, and then applying this knowledge in designing new medical treatments and procedures. Today computational methods, including finite element analyses, are the tool of choice for biomechanical research of bone tissues. Moreover, bone multiscale modeling can become a vital part of a comprehensive computerized diagnostic system for patient-specific treatment of metabolic bone diseases, fractures and bone cancer. This review paper describes the state of the art in multiscale computational methods used in analyzing bone tissue. The discussed methods and techniques can serve as a base for the creation of such an envisioned diagnostic system.