3D knee modeling and biomechanical simulation

Knee osteotomy is a kind of orthopedic surgery to realign the lower limb by opening or cutting a bone wedge from the leg. It is a better alternative than other types of knee-replacement surgeries, especially for young people. However, knee osteotomy requires understanding the imbalance of stresses at the knee joint, analyzing an abnormal gait cycle, and cutting the bone wedge precisely. Therefore, it is difficult and can cause further damage even though it is simply a bone cut. While some computer based surgical simulation systems have been developed to help surgeons perform knee surgeries, the knee models used either are not patient-specific or lack kinematic and kinetic information. We discuss how we use computer graphics, physics based modeling, and interactive visualization to assist knee-surgery study and osteotomies. Our patient-specific 3D knee surface model helps us calculate the contact stresses at the knee joint, perform virtual surgery, and record data from surgery simulation.