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

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.