Motivation: Severe limb trauma often generates highly fragmented bones. Accurate reconstruction of the original unbroken bone from the fragments is a key factor in generating favorable outcomes for injury rehabilitation.  Below is an image showing different CT scans of broken limbs, each representing a different level of damage. They range from the most simple breaks (7-15 fragments), to the most complex ones (15- >30 fragments)

 

Overview: The aim of the project is to design a 3D interactive system capable of semi-automatically aligning fractured bone fragments. The semi-automatic approach shows promise for improving on the geometric alignment of multiple broken fragments which are difficult for surgeons to manually align. Below is a result from the existing bone fragment reassembly system which takes in user input to divide the fracture surfaces for matching it to the right surface. To the right is the result of the reassembled bone.

Implementation: The implementation is done using Java. The Graphical interface used is ShaRP, a 3D servlet used for rendering and manipulating 3D objects.

The present system for aligning the fragments requires human interaction for fracture surface segmentation. To eliminate this step, the concept of spin images is used to automatically identify surfaces which are potential matches.

Updates: The progress of this project will be updated periodically as it gets to completion. Right now I am working on generating spin images for multiple points on the fragment surfaces to be able to match them accurately.