3DExperience and digital orthopaedics

13-01-2019 | Posted by Principia

A little over a year ago we discussed how additive manufacturing allowed companies to contemplate producing items for a single client rather than for a generic market.

This simulation-based customisation can be applied today to something as critical as the treatment of musculoskeletal pathologies, using collaborative platforms such as 3DExperience.

The traditional approach to orthopaedic diagnosis and treatment is based, for a given patient, on the experience that a doctor or department might have accumulated in similar cases; this allows them to produce a more or less realistic generic representation, which is used to guide the treatment applied and its pertinent ulterior modifications.

Since many orthopaedic treatments require surgery, ulterior modifications are complex to implement and have a major impact on the patient’s care and comfort.

In this regard, using the new simulation technologies, Digital Orthopaedics proposes a major improvement: based on digital images of the patient, a customised model is created which, using realistic simulation, allows arriving at the best possible treatment for that patient.

To make this a reality, the power of a collaborative simulation platform like 3DExperience must be combined with a huge database of orthopaedic diagnoses and treatments, which gathers and allows sharing the experience of medical professionals and includes a machine learning process to provide support when taking clinical decisions.

The development of this digital orthopaedic ecosystem is still somewhat embryonic and there is still a rather long way until the bulk of the scientific community takes it on board, but the use of platforms like 3DExperience presents numerous advantages:

• It provides an appropriate framework for an optimal workflow from the taking of images, to the creation of 3D models and their use in realistic simulations.
• Being a collaborative platform, it allows connecting clinical images from hospitals, as well as orthopaedic surgeons, from anywhere in the world.
• The 3D models developed and the results of the realistic simulations can be accessed by all the experts involved in the ecosystem

 

 

Thanks to pioneers like Digital Orthopaedics and collaborative simulation platforms like 3DExperience, customised orthopaedic surgery is already a reality. When we go into the operating room, we will know that the diagnosis and treatment will be based not just on the experience of the medical team but also on our specific personal circumstances.