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Reliability of Lower Limb Alignment Measures Based on Human Body Surface Points

Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering volume 42, pages 234–241 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

This study intends to evaluate the effectiveness and reliability of defining lower limb alignment based on body surface points. Furthermore, the correlation between measurement error and bone morphology is also evaluated.

Methods

A body surface points based method for identifying lower limb alignment is proposed by three steps: Firstly, the CT images of 16 patients (32 legs) are obtained from the hospital CT database. In this manner, the reference anatomical points and the body surface points are measured. Secondly, transformation between body surface points and the equivalent joint centers are defined. Then the lower limb alignment is constructed. Finally, the statistical analysis is carried out to evaluate the error and stability.

Results

The coronal alignment can be accurately defined by the body surface points. The deviation caused by central positioning of the knee joint of the femur is 0.385 ± 0.306° (range: 0.004–1.519; 95% CI 0.279–0.492), and the error is not correlated with bone length (R = -0.015), bone width (R = 0.105), and bone length-to-width ratio(R = -0.080); the deviation due to central positioning of the tibial knee joint is 0.658 ± 0.509° (range: 0.040–1.815; 95% CI 0.482–0.835), and the error is independent of bone length (R = − 0.110), bone width (R = − 0.150), and bone length-to-width ratio(R = 0.117); the deviation due to central positioning of the ankle joint is 0.387 ± 0.301° (range: 0.007–0.963°; 95% CI 0.283–0.492), and the error is not correlated with bone length (R = − 0.062), bone width (R = 0.047), and bone length-to-width ratio(R = − 0.105).

Conclusions

The method of defining equivalent joint center based on body surface points is applicable to different anatomical positioning. The identification of lower limb alignment is noninvasive and has high accuracy, especially for coronal alignment. However, it has limitations in the sagittal view. In addition, there is no correlation between the error and bone morphology.

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Funding

This work was partly supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFB1307800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51775367), Tianjin Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 18PTLCSY00080, No. 20201193, No. 18YFSDZC00010).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300354, China

    Chuanba Liu, Tao Sun & Yimin Song

  2. Department of Orthopedic, Tianjin Hospital, Tianjin, 300211, China

    Xinlong Ma & Tao Zhang

Authors
  1. Chuanba Liu
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  2. Tao Sun
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Contributions

CL, TS equally to research design, analysis of data, and drafting of the manuscript. XM, YS, TZ contributed equally to critical revisions of the manuscript as well as approval of the final submission. All authors have read and approved the final submitted manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tao Sun.

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The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Ethical Approval

This article used anonymous data from an existing collection of CT scans and does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. Informed consent for this type of study is not required. The authors have no potential conflict of interest.

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Cite this article

Liu, C., Sun, T., Ma, X. et al. Reliability of Lower Limb Alignment Measures Based on Human Body Surface Points. J. Med. Biol. Eng. 42, 234–241 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40846-022-00693-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40846-022-00693-9

Keywords

  • Alignment
  • Body surface points
  • Orthopedic surgery
  • Osteoarthritis