TY - JOUR A1 - Glatzeder, Korbinian A1 - Komnik, Igor A1 - Ambellan, Felix A1 - Zachow, Stefan A1 - Potthast, Wolfgang T1 - Dynamic pressure analysis of novel interpositional knee spacer implants in 3D-printed human knee models JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Alternative treatment methods for knee osteoarthritis (OA) are in demand, to delay the young (< 50 Years) patient’s need for osteotomy or knee replacement. Novel interpositional knee spacers shape based on statistical shape model (SSM) approach and made of polyurethane (PU) were developed to present a minimally invasive method to treat medial OA in the knee. The implant should be supposed to reduce peak strains and pain, restore the stability of the knee, correct the malalignment of a varus knee and improve joint function and gait. Firstly, the spacers were tested in artificial knee models. It is assumed that by application of a spacer, a significant reduction in stress values and a significant increase in the contact area in the medial compartment of the knee will be registered. Biomechanical analysis of the effect of novel interpositional knee spacer implants on pressure distribution in 3D-printed knee model replicas: the primary purpose was the medial joint contact stress-related biomechanics. A secondary purpose was a better understanding of medial/lateral redistribution of joint loading. Six 3D printed knee models were reproduced from cadaveric leg computed tomography. Each of four spacer implants was tested in each knee geometry under realistic arthrokinematic dynamic loading conditions, to examine the pressure distribution in the knee joint. All spacers showed reduced mean stress values by 84–88% and peak stress values by 524–704% in the medial knee joint compartment compared to the non-spacer test condition. The contact area was enlarged by 462–627% as a result of the inserted spacers. Concerning the appreciable contact stress reduction and enlargement of the contact area in the medial knee joint compartment, the premises are in place for testing the implants directly on human knee cadavers to gain further insights into a possible tool for treating medial knee osteoarthritis. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20463-6 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Amiranashvili, Tamaz A1 - Lüdke, David A1 - Li, Hongwei Bran A1 - Zachow, Stefan A1 - Menze, Bjoern T1 - Learning continuous shape priors from sparse data with neural implicit functions JF - Medical Image Analysis N2 - Statistical shape models are an essential tool for various tasks in medical image analysis, including shape generation, reconstruction and classification. Shape models are learned from a population of example shapes, which are typically obtained through segmentation of volumetric medical images. In clinical practice, highly anisotropic volumetric scans with large slice distances are prevalent, e.g., to reduce radiation exposure in CT or image acquisition time in MR imaging. For existing shape modeling approaches, the resolution of the emerging model is limited to the resolution of the training shapes. Therefore, any missing information between slices prohibits existing methods from learning a high-resolution shape prior. We propose a novel shape modeling approach that can be trained on sparse, binary segmentation masks with large slice distances. This is achieved through employing continuous shape representations based on neural implicit functions. After training, our model can reconstruct shapes from various sparse inputs at high target resolutions beyond the resolution of individual training examples. We successfully reconstruct high-resolution shapes from as few as three orthogonal slices. Furthermore, our shape model allows us to embed various sparse segmentation masks into a common, low-dimensional latent space — independent of the acquisition direction, resolution, spacing, and field of view. We show that the emerging latent representation discriminates between healthy and pathological shapes, even when provided with sparse segmentation masks. Lastly, we qualitatively demonstrate that the emerging latent space is smooth and captures characteristic modes of shape variation. We evaluate our shape model on two anatomical structures: the lumbar vertebra and the distal femur, both from publicly available datasets. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2024.103099 VL - 94 SP - 103099 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Amiranashvili, Tamaz A1 - Lüdke, David A1 - Li, Hongwei A1 - Menze, Bjoern A1 - Zachow, Stefan T1 - Learning Shape Reconstruction from Sparse Measurements with Neural Implicit Functions T2 - Medical Imaging with Deep Learning N2 - Reconstructing anatomical shapes from sparse or partial measurements relies on prior knowledge of shape variations that occur within a given population. Such shape priors are learned from example shapes, obtained by segmenting volumetric medical images. For existing models, the resolution of a learned shape prior is limited to the resolution of the training data. However, in clinical practice, volumetric images are often acquired with highly anisotropic voxel sizes, e.g. to reduce image acquisition time in MRI or radiation exposure in CT imaging. The missing shape information between the slices prohibits existing methods to learn a high-resolution shape prior. We introduce a method for high-resolution shape reconstruction from sparse measurements without relying on high-resolution ground truth for training. Our method is based on neural implicit shape representations and learns a continuous shape prior only from highly anisotropic segmentations. Furthermore, it is able to learn from shapes with a varying field of view and can reconstruct from various sparse input configurations. We demonstrate its effectiveness on two anatomical structures: vertebra and femur, and successfully reconstruct high-resolution shapes from sparse segmentations, using as few as three orthogonal slices. Y1 - 2022 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Lüdke, David A1 - Amiranashvili, Tamaz A1 - Ambellan, Felix A1 - Ezhov, Ivan A1 - Menze, Bjoern A1 - Zachow, Stefan T1 - Landmark-free Statistical Shape Modeling via Neural Flow Deformations T2 - Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention - MICCAI 2022 N2 - Statistical shape modeling aims at capturing shape variations of an anatomical structure that occur within a given population. Shape models are employed in many tasks, such as shape reconstruction and image segmentation, but also shape generation and classification. Existing shape priors either require dense correspondence between training examples or lack robustness and topological guarantees. We present FlowSSM, a novel shape modeling approach that learns shape variability without requiring dense correspondence between training instances. It relies on a hierarchy of continuous deformation flows, which are parametrized by a neural network. Our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods in providing an expressive and robust shape prior for distal femur and liver. We show that the emerging latent representation is discriminative by separating healthy from pathological shapes. Ultimately, we demonstrate its effectiveness on two shape reconstruction tasks from partial data. Our source code is publicly available (https://github.com/davecasp/flowssm). Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16434-7_44 VL - 13432 PB - Springer, Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Sengupta, Agniva A1 - Kuş, Dilara A1 - Li, Jianning A1 - Zachow, Stefan T1 - Globally Optimal Pose from Orthographic Silhouettes N2 - We solve the problem of determining the pose of known shapes in R^3 from their unoccluded silhouettes. The pose is determined up to global optimality using a simple yet under-explored property of the area-of-silhouette: its continuity w.r.t trajectories in the rotation space. The proposed method utilises pre-computed silhouette-signatures, modelled as a response surface of the area-of-silhouettes. Querying this silhouette-signature response surface for pose estimation leads to a strong branching of the rotation search space, making resolution-guided candidate search feasible. Additionally, we utilise the aspect ratio of 2D ellipses fitted to projected silhouettes as an auxiliary global shape signature to accelerate the pose search. This combined strategy forms the first method to efficiently estimate globally optimal pose from just the silhouettes, without being guided by correspondences, for any shape, irrespective of its convexity and genus. We validate our method on synthetic and real examples, demonstrating significantly improved accuracy against comparable approaches. Y1 - 2026 ER -