Computer-aided Surgical Planning of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in MR Images

Abstract Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury causes knee joint instability, and effects on sports performance. Therefore, ACL reconstruction is essential to keep their high performance. It is well known that the outcome of ACL reconstruction is strongly related to the placement and orientation of the bone tunnel. Therefore, optimization of tunnel drilling technique is an important factor to obtain satisfactory surgical results. Current procedure relies on arthroscopic evaluation and there is a risk of damaging arteries and ligaments during surgery. The damages may reduce the accuracy and reproducibility of ACL reconstruction. As a postoperative evaluation method, a quadrant method has been used to evaluate the placement and orientation of the bone tunnel in X-ray radiography. This study proposes a computer-aided surgical planning system for evaluating ACL insertion site and orientation using magnetic resonance (MR) images. We first introduce MR image based the quadrant method to determine the ACL insertion site for preoperative patients. It also evaluates the 3-D spatial relationship between the planning femoral drilling hole and arteries around the femoral condyle. This system has been applied to ACL injured patients, it may increase the accuracy and reproducibility of ACL bone tunnel, and it can evaluate a risk of damaging the surrounding arteries and ligaments.