A compact representation of the bone fracture area. Application to fractured bones of clinical cases

ABSTRACT

The extraction of the main features of a fractured bone area enables a posterior virtual reproduction of the same fracture on other bones. The utilisation of the fracture zone for other applications is almost an unexplored field of research. Recreating a given fracture on other areas or bones can be directly applied to medical training programmes of traumatologists or to automatic bone fracture reduction algorithms. This paper is focused on the process of generating a fracture pattern taking computed tomography scans as a starting point. A set of alternative representations, for different purposes, is presented and discussed. A study of several clinical cases is analysed. Finally, the potential usages of bone fracture patterns are described.

KEYWORDS:

• Bone fracture
• compact representation
• clinical cases
• fracture generation
• fracture pattern
• fracture zone
• segmentation
• template

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Union [DPI2015-65123-R].

Notes on contributors

Adrián Luque

Adrián Luque was born in Spain, in 1991. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of Jaén, Spain, in 2015 and 2018, respectively. He is currently the Ph.D. Student in computer science and an Interim Teacher at the University of Jaen, Spain. He is a member of the working team of a research project financed by ERDF funds. He is the author of two book chapters, five articles in JCR journals, of which three are considered high impact articles and four international conference papers. His research interests include GPGPU computing, computer graphics, medical image analysis, and bone fracture analysis.

J. Roberto Jiménez-Pérez

J. Roberto Jiménez-Pérez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Jaén. He is a member of the Center for Advanced Studies in Information and Communication Technologies of the University of Jaén. He also belongs to the Graphics and Geomatics Group research group of the University of Jaén. In 2010, he read his doctoral thesis with an international mention at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia under the supervision of Xavier Pueyo (University of Girona) and Karol Myszkowski (Max Planck Institute for Informatics – Germany). The thesis entitled “Interactive frame rates for globally illuminated scenes in presence of participating media” dealt with interactive visualization techniques capable of calculating light behavior in scenes with global lighting and in the presence of participating media (clouds, dirt, fog, …). In both cases, for static and dynamic scenes with participating media, presented stochastic solutions based on a combination of Monte Carlo and other statistical techniques. For scenes with dynamic lighting, a deterministic technique based on spherical harmonics was used to precalculate some of the components of the radiance transfer equation. All these techniques, both stochastic and deterministic, were optimized by using the parallel computing capability of graphics cards (GPU programming). Subsequently, his research has been multidisciplinary, collaborating in the study of several techniques:- Techniques for interactive visualization of 3D medical images on smart mobile devices,- Computer-assisted techniques in bone fracture reduction processes, both focused on planning an intervention and with training purposes.- Techniques to generate bone fractures.- Virtual reality applications. He has held several management positions in the university. He was vice director of the Polytechnic Higher School of Jaén from 2008 to 2011 and vice-vice-President of the University of Jaén with competences in ICT from 2011 to May 2019.

Francisco Daniel Pérez Cano

Francisco Daniel Pérez-Cano was born in Jaén, in 1993. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of Jaén, Spain, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. He is currently the Ph.D. Student in computer science at the University of Jaen, Spain. Since 2019, he has been an Interim Teacher in the area of programming languages and computer systems at the same university. He is a member of the working team of a research project financed by ERDF funds and member of the Computer Graphics and Geomatic Research Group at the University of Jaén. He is the author of two book chapters and five international conference papers, two of which were selected and presented orally at the conferences. His research interests include modeling, computer graphics, medical image analysis, and bone fracture analysis.

Juan José Jiménez Delgado

Juan José Jiménez-Delgado was born in Mancha Real, Jaén, Spain, in 1972. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from the University of Granada, Spain, in 1996, and the Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Jaén, Spain, in 2006. From 1997 to 2003, he was an Assistant Professor with the Computer Science Department of the University of Jaén. Since 2003, he has been a Full Professor with the Computer Science Department, University of Jaén. He is the head of several research projects financed by ERDF funds related to bone fracture reduction, generation, analysis, and modeling. He is the author of three books, 20 book chapters, 25 articles, and more than 60 conference papers. His research interests include computer graphics, medical image analysis, computer methods in biomedicine, computer assisted applications in medicine, bone modeling, and bone fracture analysis. Dr. Jiménez-Delgado was a member of the Eurographics Association. Currently, he is a member of the Computer Graphics and Geomatic Research Group at the University of Jaén.