FEST II Clinical validation of a simulation model which calculates the initial stability from osteosyntheses to quantify the healing process based on CT-Data

Status:

completed 06/2013

Aims:

The goal of this project was to validate the FEST process to determine the initial stability of osteosynthesis and to define the healing progress in an extended application. FEST is a tool which enables the creation of patient specific CAD models by using CT data. The tool calculates the stability of the fracture situation by using the finite element method. This tool is the key to have the possibility to check the correlation of the initial mechanical stability of a fracture situation with the healing progress. Furthermore, the quantification of the healing situation should be possible.

Activities/Methods:

1. Search of suitable patient data.
2. Retrospective application of the FEST on the collected patient data.
3. Evaluation of the retrospective application.
4. Prospective application of the FEST on clinicallychallenging cases of fracture treatment.
5. Evaluation of the prospective application.

Results:

In conclusion, it has to be noticed that the FEST is not valid for the prediction of clinical surrogate parameters. An additional in-vivo validation on osteotomized and fixed human femurs showed that the FEST cannot predict interfragmentary motions within reasonable error margins.

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