Use of general purpose mechanical computer assisted engineering software in orthopaedic surgical planning: advantages and limitations

Two surgical plans were developed for an appropriately complex reconstructive orthopaedic surgery case. One plan was developed with customary methods using two-dimensional (2D) radiographs. The second plan was developed with general purpose mechanical computer assisted engineering (MCAE) software using x-ray computed tomography (CT) data. The limitations of each method are identified. To create a surgical plan using three-dimensional (3D) medical datasets and MCAE software, five necessary steps were identified: (a) data reduction; (b) contour extraction; (c) 3D model creation; (d) extraction of mass properties; (e) model idealization. The principal limitation of general purpose MCAE software is the lack of pre-processing modules with which to address the unique requirements of medical image datasets.