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Quantitative analysis of the patellofemoral motion pattern using semi-automatic processing of 4D CT data

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

To present a semi-automatic method with minimal user interaction for quantitative analysis of the patellofemoral motion pattern.

Methods

4D CT data capturing the patellofemoral motion pattern of a continuous flexion and extension were collected for five patients prone to patellar luxation both pre- and post-surgically. For the proposed method, an observer would place landmarks in a single 3D volume, which then are automatically propagated to the other volumes in a time sequence. From the landmarks in each volume, the measures patellar displacement, patellar tilt and angle between femur and tibia were computed.

Results

Evaluation of the observer variability showed the proposed semi-automatic method to be favorable over a fully manual counterpart, with an observer variability of approximately 1.5\(^{\circ }\) for the angle between femur and tibia, 1.5 mm for the patellar displacement, and 4.0\(^{\circ }\)–5.0\(^{\circ }\) for the patellar tilt. The proposed method showed that surgery reduced the patellar displacement and tilt at maximum extension with approximately 10–15 mm and 15\(^{\circ }\)–20\(^{\circ }\) for three patients but with less evident differences for two of the patients.

Conclusions

A semi-automatic method suitable for quantification of the patellofemoral motion pattern as captured by 4D CT data has been presented. Its observer variability is on par with that of other methods but with the distinct advantage to support continuous motions during the image acquisition.

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Acknowledgments

Visualization and measurements were performed using MeVisLab (provided by Fraunhofer MEVIS, Bremen).

Funding D. Forsberg has been partly funded VINNOVA, the Swedish Innovation Agency (Grant 2014-01422).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sectra AB, Linköping, Sweden

    Daniel Forsberg

  2. Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Daniel Forsberg & Petter Quick

  3. Department of Radiology, Linköping University Hospital, Linköping, Sweden

    Maria Lindblom

  4. Orthopaedic Department, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Håkan Gauffin

Authors
  1. Daniel Forsberg
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  2. Maria Lindblom
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  3. Petter Quick
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  4. Håkan Gauffin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Forsberg.

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Conflict of interest

D. Forsberg is an employee of Sectra AB, a medical IT provider for radiology and pre-operative planning within orthopedics. The other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Forsberg, D., Lindblom, M., Quick, P. et al. Quantitative analysis of the patellofemoral motion pattern using semi-automatic processing of 4D CT data. Int J CARS 11, 1731–1741 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-016-1357-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-016-1357-8

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