ALMOST AUTOMATIC PROCEDURE FOR ANISOTROPIC COMPUTATIONAL DESCRIPTION OF BONY STRUCTURES

Accurate finite element (FE) models are great potential tools in ensure the reliability in presurgical planning of interventions and in prediction of stress and strain fields, through a non-invasive method. Patient-specific biomechanical models, in terms of geometrical structure and material properties, are increasingly in demand for real-time applications, especially in orthopaedics and in implantology. The main challenge pertains to the reliable characterization of bone mechanical behavior. An almost automatic procedure is defined, which provides a description of bony structures by combining Computed Tomography (CT) data segmentation strategies and micromechanics modeling techniques. In details, the algorithm gives information about the distribution of bone tissue orthotropic elastic properties, derived by the Hounsfield Unit (HU) value, and the principal material directions, derived by the analysis of the local HU values distribution around the considered location.