Bert van Rietbergen
Department / Institute
Group
RESEARCH PROFILE
Bert van Rietbergen is an Associate Professor in the Orthopaedic Biomechanics research group. Most of his research is aimed at the evaluation of bone structural and mechanical properties for the study of bone diseases (osteoporosis) and implant failure. He has developed a new computational approach for mechanical analysis of bone structures from high-resolution images, and over the last decade his work has focused on clinical applications of this approach for improved diagnosis of bone fracture risk.
Apart from bone fracture risk diagnosis, it is also important to predict how this fracture risk may develop as the results of aging, pharmacological treatments or orthopedic surgery. Van Rietbergen aims at predicting this by developing computational models based on mechanical and biological principles that are validated relative to data obtained from clinical studies.
In recent projects Van Rietbergen is concerned with patient specific prognosis of the risk of bone fracture, multiscale approaches to predict bone remodeling, the analysis of surgical procedures such as used for correction/stabilization of skeletal deformities/fractures and the application of biomaterials.
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
Bert van Rietbergen studied mechanical engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, The Netherlands) where he received his MSc degree in 1988. After a short appointment as research assistant at the department of Cariology and Endodontology of Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), he moved to the Orthopaedic Research Lab of that same university in 1989. From 1992-1996 he performed his PhD research there under supervision of Prof. Rik Huiskes. He obtained his PhD cum laude with his thesis on 'Mechanical behavior and adaptation of trabecular bone in relation to bone morphology'. In 1997, Van Rietbergen moved to Switzerland for a postdoc position at the ETH Zürich (Institute of Biomedical Engineering). In 1999 he returned to the TU/e to be appointed at Assistant Professor in the newly formed department of Biomedical Engineering. In 2003 he was appointed Associate Professor of Bone & Orthopaedic Biomechanics.
Key Publications
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P. Christen,K. Ito,R. Ellouz,S. Boutroy,E. Sornay-Rendu,R. Chapurlat,B. Rietbergen, van
Bone remodelling in humans is load-driven but not lazy
Nature Communications (2014) -
Elizabeth J. Samelson,Kerry E. Broe,Hanfei Xu,Laiji Yang,Steven Boyd,Emmanuel Biver,Pawel Szulc,Jonathan Adachi,Shreyasee Amin,Elizabeth Atkinson
Cortical and trabecular bone microarchitecture as an independent predictor of incident fracture risk in older women and men in the Bone Microarchitecture International Consortium (BoMIC)
the Lancet. Diabetes & Endocrinology (2019) -
B. Rietbergen, van,H. Weinans,H.W.J. Huiskes,A. Odgaard
A new method to determine trabecular bone elastic properties and loading using micromechanical finite-element models
Journal of Biomechanics (1995) -
B. Rietbergen, van,R. Huiskes,F. Eckstein,P. Rüegsegger
Trabecular bone tissue strains in the healthy and osteoporotic human femur
Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (2003) -
Feihu Zhao,Johanna Melke,Keita Ito,Bert van Rietbergen,Sandra Hofmann
A multiscale computational fluid dynamics approach to simulate the micro-fluidic environment within a tissue engineering scaffold with highly irregular pore geometry
Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology (2019)
Current Educational Activities
Ancillary Activities
No ancillary activities