from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- adj. Anatomy Having an open, latticed, or porous structure. Used especially of bone.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- adj. (of bone) Having low density and strength but high surface area, of the kind that fills the inner cavity of long bones.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- adj. Having a spongy or porous structure; made up of cancelli; cancellated.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Same as cancellate.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adj. having an open or latticed or porous structure
Hence this is called cancellous tissue, and the gradual transition from one to the other is apparent.
Mammalian Spongy Bone - Spongy bone, also known as cancellous bone, is less dense than compact bone and is composed of a honeycomb-like network of bones called trabeculae.
Without the cancellous bone our bones would be very brittle.
Bone of the cancellous type is found in the long bones, sternum, vertebrae and between layers of the cranium bones.
First, if the shaft of a long bone be hit above the junction of diaphysis and epiphysis, the cancellous tissue in and extending from the medullary cavity is pulverised, and examination of fragments from such fractures gives the impression of the inner aspect having been scraped clean.
Putting these peculiarities on one side, the cancellous ends are subject to the type forms of injury; thus perforations either of the head of the bone or the malleolus were common injuries.
Another element also in the less clean punctures of the short and cancellous bones was probably the less accurate and hard shooting of the Mauser rifles as they became worn; the bullets seemed to evidence this by the comparative shallowness of their rifle grooves, which, I take it, would mean less velocity and accuracy in flight.
This would be of importance, since the clean puncture of cancellous bone was no doubt favoured by a high rate of velocity.
The patient then returned to England, when the wound rapidly healed after the removal of some further necrosed fragments of cancellous tissue.
_ -- Although these were common in cancellous bone, they were comparatively rare in the compact shafts.