to serve as a pathway for delivering instruments or materials into the bone in alternative embodiments a surgical needle having a cannulated body and a pointed tip may be used to access the vertebral body following the method 10 described above a modulated bone augmentation material mixture 44 comprised of a mixture of bone cement 46 and the microparticles 22 may be formed and transferred to a delivery system 48 the delivery system 48 may be a conventional syringe having a material reservoir and a plunger mechanism movable therethrough or a more sophisticated threaded injection system such as the type covered by for example u s pat no 6 348 055 which is incorporated by reference herein the delivery system 48 may be actuated such as by moving the plunger mechanism into the material reservoir to move the mixture 44 through the cannula 42 and into the vertebra 34 where the mixture may flow into the interstices of the cancellous bone of the vertebral body 38 as shown in fig7 it is understood that the microparticles 22 shown in fig7 are not to scale but rather are merely exemplary of the random disbursement of the microparticles within bone filling material as described above within any given mixture of modulated bone augmentation material the microparticles may have different sizes and or material properties further the density of microparticles may be determined based upon the degree to which the original bone filling material must be modified to achieve an acceptable modulated bone augmentation material with the microparticles 22 distributed throughout the bone cement 46 the modulated bone augmentation mixture 44 may be cured or otherwise allowed to harden within the vertebral body 38 the microparticles 22 may remain suspended in the hardened bone cement 46 reducing the.