The scan said low-risk. The bone broke anyway.
A broken hip is rarely just a broken hip. It’s the end of driving, the end of living alone, the end of being the one who takes care of everyone else.
Two out of three of those fractures happen in people a density scan never called osteoporotic. Tested. Cleared. Fractured anyway. For nearly forty years, an X-ray was the best medicine had to measure bone. Until now. OsteoProbe® measures bone strength by touching the bone instead of photographing it — the first device FDA-cleared to do so, and the only one.Same T-score. Different bone strength.
Two patients. Identical scans. Identical risk category. But one bone holds, and one doesn’t. The density scan called them the same. The bone was not the same.
Density tells you how much bone is there. It cannot tell you whether that bone can take a load. That’s a different property — bone material strength — and no image has ever been able to see it.
Identify patients with soft bone
An objective bone-quality data point before you commit to a plan — for the patients where density is least reliable.
For physicians → PatientsUnderstand your bone beyond density
“Come back in two years” isn’t an answer. Get a fuller picture of your bone strength — radiation-free, in about five minutes.
For patients → Investors & PartnersThe first device to measure BMSi
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Partner with us →This isn’t a better scan. It isn’t a scan at all.
Every bone test in clinical use works the same way: capture an image, estimate strength from what the image shows. X-ray. DXA. CT. All of them infer.
And what they’re inferring from is mineral. But bone doesn’t resist cracking because of mineral — it resists because of a molecular glue in the organic matrix, bonds that break on purpose to absorb a hit, then re-form.
That glue decides whether a bone cracks or holds, and it degrades with age, diabetes, and steroids. It’s why diabetic patients fracture at normal T-scores. The mineral is there. The glue isn’t.
OsteoProbe does something no imaging device can do. It makes contact with the bone and measures how the tissue itself responds to impact. You can’t photograph glue. You have to test it.
Density is about quantity
How much mineral is packed into the bone. It matters — but a bone can be dense and still be brittle, cracking under a load it should have handled. This is what DXA reports: bone mineral density (BMD), expressed as a T-score.
Strength is about quality
How well the bone tissue itself holds up to force. Think of a thick pane of glass versus a thin sheet of tempered steel. This is what OsteoProbe measures: bone material strength, reported as the Bone Material Strength Index (BMSi).
Stop inferring strength. Start measuring it.
Will my bone hold? That’s the question. For thirty years, a T-score was the closest anyone could get—not because it was the right answer, but because measuring the real thing meant removing a piece of bone and testing it in a laboratory. That constraint is gone.
What once required an operating room now happens in an exam chair. After the shin is numbed with a local anesthetic, the OsteoProbe® gently contacts the surface of the bone and delivers a series of microscopic taps.
The more the bone resists, the higher the BoneScore®. The less it resists, the lower the score. Higher BoneScore® values indicate stronger, more fracture-resistant bone tissue.
Scores run from about 40 to 100. Healthy adults typically land around 82.
- Higher score — your bone resisted the tap. Harder, tougher tissue that stops cracks well.
- Lower score — the probe sank farther. Softer tissue that cracks more easily.
You’ll see your result on the screen right away, and your doctor can review it with you before you leave.
- Direct — measures the bone tissue itself, not an image of it
- Radiation-free — safe to repeat as often as the case calls for
- In-office procedure — no sedation, nothing to recover from, result before the patient leaves
Direct validation against whole-bone strength
A 2026 study in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research tested 67 cadaver donors, measuring bone strength directly at the shin and comparing it to fracture force at the hip, wrist, and spine. BoneScore tracked bone’s resistance to cracking — fracture toughness — at r = 0.83, a property density scans cannot measure. Added to DXA at the hip, it nearly doubled the explained variation in hip-region bone strength, from 28% to 52%. BoneScore was superior to DXA at identifying patients with weak bones who had osteopenia or normal BMD.1Density and strength. Now you can have both.
BoneScore doesn’t replace DXA — it adds to it. Use both for a fuller picture of your patient’s bone health than density alone can give.
Already in use at Mayo Clinic, Vanderbilt, Scripps, and HSS.
Give your clinic a second way to look.
See how OsteoProbe fits your workflow, your reimbursement pathway (CPT III: 0547T), and your patient conversations.
References
- Vaidya RS, et al. Impact microindentation evaluates bone strength, bone quality, and fracture susceptibility across skeletal sites: a cadaver study. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. 2026 (accepted). View source →