I am trying to correctly model articular cartilages a CT data. I used Mimics to segment the individual bones but the threshold for cartilage is unavailable in Mimics. The CT was taken at full extension which implies that there is already enough contact of the respective articulating cartilages. How do I go about this? Are there any software or algorithms that help with such overlapping interfeces?
A few years ago, I worked for a company doing a computer assisted surgery software. I segmented the hip articulation from CT image volumes in order to plan surgery on the reconstructed 3D model.
On CT images, the best we could do about the cartilage was to guess that it must be between the femoral head and the acetabulum bones as it is not really imaged by CT (see attached image). Of course, the fact that we had patients with very damaged cartilage and severe arthrosis did not help...If you can have the patient in a position that would constrain the cartillage position between the bones you are imaging, maybe you could use the same strategy.
For knew surgery, we segmented the cartilage on MR images but even this was not easy as the structure can be very thin, close the the inter-slice image distance.
IMHO, you are facing a very difficult challenge! I wish you the best of luck!
dear Sir, what is the sex and the age group of the elbow joint you are constructing then I would give you the calculation method, because the articular cartilage of humerus thickness and dimensions are calculated by the sex and the age group of the person. Thanks
Dear Dr. Hameed, the patient is male and 28 years old. Thank you
Dear Sir - the thickness of articular cartilage is supposed to be as follows:
if the person is above 6 feet Male then the calculation is 28 / 6 and that is 4.6 mm in thickness if the person is above 6 feet then please divide the exact fraction with the age 28 eg: if the height is 6.6 then divide 28 by 6.6 then it is 4.2 ---- the more the height the lesser the thickness and the shorter then more the thickness . Thanks
Dr. Hameed, thank you very much for your swift response. I however have a few questions pertaining to this formula.
1. Is there a documented reference? If yes, can you please direct me to it?
2. Does that mean that all "normal" 28 year-olds who are 6 feet tall have the same cartilage thickness?
3. Also, does that mean that the thicknesses of the articulating bones the same? In the case of the elbow, we are talking about 3 different bones here.
4. What if the information pertaining to patient height is unavailable?
Thank you
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