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. 2018 Jun 4;97(9):977–986. doi: 10.1177/0022034518778033

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© International & American Associations for Dental Research 2018

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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Figure 1. — Bone consists of either a porous trabecular framework or a dense cortical structure. In cortical bone (e.g., in the middiaphysis of the femur), the microstructure consists of osteons (170- to 250-µm diameter), which are the units of bone produced during remodeling. Osteons contain a central vascular canal, the Haversian canal (60- to 90-μm diameter), concentrically surrounded by lamellae having a twisted plywood arrangement, where neighboring lamellae have different fibril orientations. Osteocytes reside in lacunae interconnected through canaliculi (100- to 400-nm diameter). Lamellae are composed of collagen fibrils (80- to 100-nm diameter). Fibrils are surrounded by extrafibrillar mineral platelets. Within the fibrils, type I collagen molecules and carbonated apatite crystallites form a nanocomposite structure.