Melbourne Femur Collection

The Melbourne Femur Collection is a unique archive of human femoral bone tissue gathered from persons who died suddenly and unexpectedly without any major predisposing medical conditions or long periods of immobilisation. The collection also includes a large amount of image data derived from the bones and de-identified information describing the individual tissue donors. The images include post-mortem clinical CT scans, micro-CT image data, and digitised microradiographs of thin sections of the bones. The material was collected during the 1990’s and the early part of this century and the donors resided in the State of Victoria, Australia. The material was collected with ethical oversight conforming to the standards of the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia and latterly also with the informed consent of the next-of-kin. Around 600 individuals are represented in the physical collection and another 300 are described by clinical CT scans. Both sexes are represented and the age range is almost completely descriptive of the entire human lifespan. The initial justification for the collection was for age-at-death determinations in a forensic context but as those responsible have collected more and more material they have come to realise that huge variations in patterns of bone tissue ageing can be discovered amongst persons of the same chronological age. This limits the utility of the archive as a forensic anthropological reference. However, the serendipitous nature of science has meant that the greatest potential value for the collection is being realised by studies of age-related bone loss (which may lead to osteoporotic fracture of the hip) and the biomechanics and micro-structure of bone.墨尔本股骨馆藏（Melbourne Femur Collection）是一套独特的人类股骨组织存档，其样本采集自突发、意外死亡且无重大易感疾病或长期制动史的个体。该馆藏同时包含大量源自骨骼的影像数据，以及用于描述组织捐献者的去标识化信息。影像数据涵盖死后临床计算机断层扫描（CT）、显微CT（micro-CT）影像数据，以及骨骼薄片的数字化显微放射影像。该馆藏样本采集于20世纪90年代及本世纪初期，捐献者均居住于澳大利亚维多利亚州。样本采集过程遵循澳大利亚国家健康与医学研究理事会（National Health and Medical Research Council）的伦理规范，后期还获得了捐献者近亲的知情同意。实体馆藏涵盖约600名个体的样本，另有300名个体的相关数据通过临床CT扫描获取。馆藏涵盖男女两性，年龄跨度几乎覆盖整个人类生命周期。该馆藏最初的构建目的是用于法医场景下的死亡年龄鉴定，但随着采集样本的增多，研究人员发现，相同实足年龄的个体，其骨组织衰老模式存在显著差异。这一发现限制了该馆藏作为法医人类学参考资料库的应用价值。然而，科学研究中的偶然发现使得该馆藏的最大潜在价值被应用于年龄相关性骨丢失（可引发髋部骨质疏松性骨折）、骨生物力学及骨微观结构的相关研究中。