Morphometric analysis of anatomical implant forms for minimally invasive acetabular fracture osteosynthesis

Introduction: Anatomical implants enable minimally invasive osteosynthesis (MIO) and represent ideal complements of computer-assisted surgical workflows. This 3D morphometric study analyzes anatomical implant forms (AIF) for acetabular fracture osteosynthesis (AFO).Materials and Methods: Three-dimensional pelvis models were created from clinical CT data of 99 European-Caucasian patients (50 females, 49 males). The mean age of the patients was 60.1 years (range: 20–89; SD 10.8). Definition of a referential region of interest (ROI) corresponding to an AIF for AFO was followed by automated ROI computation for each of the 198 hemipelvises. Three-dimensional statistical modeling and analysis of the resulting 198 homologous ROIs consisted of thin-plate spline transformation, generalized Procrustes fit, and principal component analysis.Results: The mean ROI length was 18.2 cm (range: 16.1–20.1 cm; SD 0.76). The first principal component (PC1) mainly modeled the ROI length, which correlated well with body height ...