Clustering of Morphological Features for Identifying Femur Cavity Subtypes With Difficulties of Intramedullary Nail Implantation

Intramedullary (IM) nail implantation is currently the standard treatment for femoral intertrochanteric fractures. However, individual differences in femur cavity bring a challenge in designing well-matched IM nails and cause difficulties in IM nail implantation. Therefore, there is an intense need to analyze femur cavities to predict difficulties in IM nail implantation to assist the design of IM nails. This study proposed a method to automatically identify subtypes of femur cavities that exhibit differences in potential difficulties in nail implantation by clustering the morphological features of femur models. The unsupervised subtype extraction method offers a scientific approach to stratify patients for designing and choosing well-matched IM nails. First, the quantitative morphological features of 422 femur cavities were extracted from computed tomography patient models. Second, 422 femur cavities were clustered into three distinct subtypes using a density peak-based k -means clustering method to provide a possible solution for the scientific design of IM nails. The effectiveness of the identified subtypes was validated by comparing subtype differences associated with IM nail implantation and the natural attributes of the patient. Quantitative evaluation of the mismatch degree and real clinical cases confirmed that the clustering results were clinically effective, with clear differences in the subtypes. Therefore, particular IM nails designed from the identified subtypes will potentially facilitate IM nail implantation and reduce complications. Compared with state-of-the-art methods, we used the largest scale dataset and unsupervised clustering to achieve subtype identification of femur cavities with clinical significance.