Biomechanical Strengthening Design for Limb Articulation Based on Reconstructed Skeleton Kinesthetics

Purpose For the purpose of arthrosis structure strengthening, the reconstructed bone and cartilage are utilized to carry out holistic finite element analysis (FEA), as a whole rather than separated components in order to evaluate the biomechanical performance by convergent validation. This paper presents a biomechanical strengthening design method for human limb articulation based on reconstructed skeleton kinesthetics (RSK). Methods The 3D reconstruction of manifold structure including hard bone, medullary cavity and cartilage can be sequentially and progressively implemented from heterogeneous medical images, such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The sliced images can be recognized to extract boundary contour using deep learning-based intelligent edge detection and classification method. Once the 3D skeleton models are generated, the anatomical coordinate systems, together with joint coordinate system can be created therefrom. Based on Hertz’s contact theory, the methodology of human articulation kinesthetics can be employed to evaluate the flexion mobility. Results The equivalent stress, maximum principal stress and material strain energy under diverse loadings can be reckoned as more accurate results via Neo-Hookean hyperelastic model to evaluate biomechanical effect. As a consequence, the limb articulation can be optimized with better biodynamics performance, resulting from better arthrosis structure and its fabrication process thereafter via 3D printing (3DP) or additive manufacturing (AM). Conclusion The proposed RSK method can generate individual 3D skeleton articulation in accordance with medical images. Moreover, the RSK can forwardly accomplish biomechanical strengthening design from rehabilitation demands to the kinesthetics performance.