Preliminary report: Rapid prototyping models for dysplastic hip surgery

Abstract

Rapid prototyping (RP) is a technology used to produce physical models. The RP application is applied in the medical field to build anatomy models from high resolution multiplanar data such as Computed tomography (CT). CT of a female patient diagnosed with hip dysplasia was obtained prior to surgery. Specific software was used to prepare the physical model of the patient and was produced using fused deposition machine. Pre fused deposition models (FDM) were given to the orthopaedic surgeon to plan for the dysplastic hip dysplasia. The patient was scanned again using CT after surgery and a post model was produced. The outcome of the surgery was seen clearly by viewing the post model. Orthopaedic surgeon commented on his experience of using the models for the hip dysplasia surgery. These models were found to be very useful for pre surgery planning, determining procedure, implant sizes, positioning, bone grafting which also reduced surgery time by forty percent and increased surgeon confidence as rehearsal prior to actual surgery was made possible. This paper provides an understanding of the benefits of using RP models in hip dysplasia surgery as a good way to enhance both orthopaedic surgeon skill and knowledge. © 2011 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.