Microcat 2 scanner

The femora were scanned with a Siemens microCAT II scanner (Siemens Health care Gmbh, Munich, Germany) at 75 kVp and 250 μA, with an exposure time of 1250 ms. Using the AMIRA software for reconstruction, the noise was filtered and the data calibrated and segmented at a threshold of 1200 Hounsfield Units, differentiating between low mineralized, soft tissue (<1200), and high mineralized tissue (>1200). An evaluation of the quality of healing was carried out from µCT reconstructions by extracting two radiographic planes and quantifying the number of continuous cortices (maximum = 4, complete healing; minimum = 0, no healing).

CT scans were carried out with a MicroCAT II scanner (Siemens Medical Solutions, USA). The X-ray tube current was set to 500µA with a 0.5 mm aluminium filter at 60 kVp and an exposure time of 310 ms per projection. 360 projections were used to create a full 360̊ scan. A voxel size of 0.095 × 0.095 × 0.095 mm³ was used for image reconstruction using COBRA real-time reconstruction with the Sheep-Logan filter.
Inveon Research Workplace Version 4.2 (Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc) image analysis software was used to quantify [¹⁸F]FDG and Na[¹⁸F]F uptake in the aorta of each animal. PET and CT scans were fused by using the rigid registration function, followed by manual visual confirmation. The confirmation was based on locating renal artery that connects the abdominal aorta. Refer to Supplementary Figs. 1, 2 and 3 for examples of segmentation of aortas, ROI volume construction in the supplementary data section.