Optical measurement system for preparation and after-OP-check of a hip joint endoprothetic implantation

With 332,000 operations carried out every year, the implantation of an artificial hip joint is one of the most common surgical operations performed in the US. According to prognosis which takes the demographical change into account, the number of these operations will increase in the coming years. One of the essential requirements is the perfect reconstruction of the biomechanical functions, especially the knowledge about the center of the hip rotation and the length of the leg. Based on this information it is possible to ensure the right position of the newly set leg during surgery. The aim of this work is to present and evaluate an optical measurement method in order to gather information about the center of the hip joint and the leg length. An appropriate laboratory setup has been designed and implemented in order to evaluate two different approaches: a structured light-method consisting of a DLP-Beamer or a laser source which projects defined patterns onto the patient and a marker-based system. Together with this both methods are combined with custom software to determine the hip joint center and the leg length with an accuracy of around +/- 0.2 inches. The clinical use of the tested approaches would give the surgeon the opportunity to reset the implant-parameters in the course of the surgery. In this way subsequent illnesses such as scoliotic pelvis can be prevented