Determining the location of hip joint centre: application of a conchoid's shape to the acetabular cartilage surface of magnetic resonance images

Abstract

Preoperative planning, or intraoperative navigation of hip surgery, including joint-preserving procedures such as osteotomy or joint-replacing procedures such as total arthroplasty, needs to be performed with a high degree of accuracy to ensure a successful outcome. The ability to precisely localise the hip joint rotation centre may prove to be very useful in this context. The human hip joint has been shown to be a conchoid shape, and therefore the accurate location of the hip joint centre (HJC) cannot be computed simply as the centre of a sphere. This study describes a method for determining the HJC by applying a conchoid shape to the acetabular cartilage surface of magnetic resonance images, in order to increase the accuracy of the HJC location which had previously been calculated by a functional method using reconstructed three-dimensional surface bony models. By approximating a conchoid shape to the acetabulum, it was possible to compensate for HJC calculation errors.

Keywords:

• hip joint centre location
• pre-operative planning
• total joint arthroplasty
• conchoid

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr J.P. Vallée from the Radiology department at the Hospital University of Geneva for his collaboration. This study was partly supported by the CO-ME (Computer Aided and Image Guided Medical Interventions, http://www.co-me.org) project funded by the Swiss National Research.

Notes

1. [email protected]

2. [email protected]

3. [email protected]

4. [email protected]

5. [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

H. Sadri

1. 1. [email protected]

R. Stern

2. 2. [email protected]

N. Magnenat-Thalmann

3. 3. [email protected]

P. Hoffmeyer

4. 4. [email protected]

H.S. Ji

5. 5. [email protected]