Pre-operative planning for revision hip arthroplasty
Within the MULTISENSE project, the application of a multimodal/multisensorial interface, including advanced visualisation and evaluation modules in the pre-operative planning was explored. The multimodal/mutlisensorial interface was realised using advanced visualisation algorithms and importantly, with the integration of state-of-the-art immersive interface units such as stereoscopic displays, haptic feedbacks and speech recognition. The pre-operative planner for total hip replacement was developed upon the Multimod Display and Interaction framework. This open source application framework provides three of the best software libraries currently available, which different users can utilise to realise the most disparate software systems. All visualisation services were obtained from the Visualisation Toolkit (VTK), which along with additional classes grouped in a library called Surgical-VTK formed the 'Multimod foundation layer'. To this core, the Insight Toolkit (ITK) implementing the current state of the art in segmentation and registration algorithms of diagnostic datasets was integrated. Thanks to the sophisticated structure of these foundation libraries, a powerful representation of biomedical data, the Virtual Medical Entity (VME), could be developed. The user interface was realised by integrating into the Multimod Display and Interaction framework a portable Graphical User Interface (GUI) library, the WxWindows, ensuring portability between different operating systems. The 'High abstraction level' provided the interface that programmers used to create specialised programmes starting with the Multimod Display and Interaction framework. While the Multimod Display and Interaction framework is not a numerical simulation environment, it has evolved into a specialised environment for pre-processing medical data to form simulation models. It could also contribute to the post-processing of the simulation results alongside with diagnostic data for providing anatomically rich and clinically relevant visualisations of the simulation results. On the other hand, true benefits could be gained from the employment of the multimodal/mulitsensorial interface in all aspects of medical planning and training. Quantitative indicators on the pre-operative planning could be provided with high accuracy and repeatability.