Automated CT-based 3D surgical planning for total hip replacement: A pilot study

At the preoperative planning stage of CT-based computer-assisted total hip replacement, a surgeon determines the parameters such as size, position, and orientations of the implants based on interactive visualization of 3D models of the implants and hip joint bone. However, the parameters depend on surgeon's visual assessment of spatial relationship between the hip joint bone and implants. Our objective is to investigate objective criteria for determination of the optimal parameters and formulate an automated determination procedure based on the criteria. We objectified expertise in the preoperative planning of an experienced surgeon into quantitative evaluations and geometrical constraints, then formulated the automated procedure as an optimization problem. The automated planning system was applied to three cases of patient data sets and compared with an experienced surgeon. In the preliminary results, the planning parameters determined by the system were generally acceptable as a pilot experiment. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.