3D CT Segmentation for Clinical Evaluation of Knee Prosthesis Operations

Abstract

In surgical knee replacement, the damaged knee joint is replaced with artificial prostheses. An accurate clinical evaluation must be carried out before applying knee prostheses to ensure optimal outcome from surgical operations and to reduce the probability of having long-term problems. Useful information can be inferred from CT scans of the knee area, that can be used to estimate the stress that will be acting on the prosthesis being implanted. This information can be exploited to tailor the prothesis to the patient s anatomy. We present some ideas for a system intended to help surgeons in evaluating the post-operative outcome of knee prosthesis implantation. We also show some preliminary results about the 3D segmentation of CT data, that is the main activity of our lab in the project.