Systems and methods for prediction of osteoporotic fracture risk

A computer-implemented method of training an osteoporotic fracture classifier for use in a process to predict risk of osteoporotic fracture for treatment of a patient, comprising:

• receiving a corpus of training image files, the training image files comprising data of a CT scan of a body image of at least one patient containing at least one bone portion, the CT scan having being performed with settings selected for imaging of non-osteoporosis related pathology, each respective training image being associated with either a patient diagnosed osteoporosis, or a patient without an osteoporosis diagnosis;
• extracting features based on the imaging data denoting the identified bone portion in each respective CT scan;
• and
• training an osteoporotic fracture classifier based on the extracted features, to provide an osteoporotic fracture predictive factor indicative of osteoporotic fracture risk in the patient for treatment of the patient.

A system for predicting risk of osteoporotic fracture for treatment of a patient, comprising:

• a hardware processor;
• an interface for receiving imaging data of a computed tomography (CT) scan of a body of the patient containing at least a bone portion, the CT scan being performed with settings selected for imaging of non-osteoporosis related pathology;
• a memory having stored thereon program modules for instruction execution by the processor, comprising:
• a bone identification module including instructions to process the imaging data to identify the bone portion;
• a feature extraction module including instructions to extract features based on the imaging data denoting the identified bone portion;
• a classifier module including instructions to compute an osteoporotic fracture predictive factor indicative of the risk of developing or having at least one osteoporotic fracture in the patient based on the extracted features, the osteoporotic fracture predictive factor calculated by applying a trained osteoporotic fracture classifier to the extracted features, the osteoporotic fracture classifier trained from data from a plurality of CT scans performed with settings selected for imaging non-osteoporosis related pathology;
• and
• an output unit for providing a the osteoporotic fracture predictive factor for treatment of the patient.