HipNav : Pre-operative Planning and Intraoperative Navigational Guidance for Acetabular Implant Placement in Total Hip Replacement Surgery

The Hip Navigation or HipNav system allows a surgeon to determine optimal, patient-specific acetabular implant placement, and accurately achieve the desired acetabular implant placement during surgery. HipNav includes three components: a pre-operative planner, a range of motion simulator, and an intra-operative tracking and guidance system. The goals of the current HipNav system are to: I ) reduce dislocations following total hip replacement due to acetabular malposition; 2) determine and potentially increase the “safe” range of motion: 3) reduce wear debris resulting from impingement of the implant’s femoral neck with the acetabular rim; and 4) track in real time the position of the pelvis and acetabulum during surgery. This information will help the surgeon achieve more reliable and accurate positioning of the acetabular cup and take into account specific anatomy for individual patients. The HipNav system provides for a new class of research tools that can be used intra-operatively to permit surgeons to re-examine commonly held assumptions concerning bone and implant motion, range of motion testing, and the “optimal ” alignment of acetabular cups.