Computer-Aided Image-Guided Bone Fracture Surgery: Modeling, Visualization, and Preoperative Planning

This paper describes the Fracas computer-integrated orthopaedic system for assisting surgeons in closed long bone fracture reduction. Fracas’ goals are to reduce the surgeon’s cumulative exposure to radiation and improve the positioning accuracy by replacing uncorrelated static fluoroscopic images with a virtual reality display of 3D bone models created from preoperative CT and tracked intraoperatively in real-time. Fluoroscopic images are used to register the bone models to the intraoperative situation and to verify that the registration is maintained. This paper describes the system concept, and the software prototypes of the modeling, preoperative planning, and visualization modules.