Postarthroplasty Examination Using X-Ray Images

Arthroplasty, the implantation of prostheses into joints, is a surgical procedure that is affecting a larger and larger number of patients over time. As a result, it is increasingly important to develop imaging techniques to noninvasively examine joints with prostheses after surgery, both statically and dynamically in 3-D. The static problem is considered here, with the aim to create a 3-D shape model of the bone as well as the prosthesis using a set of 2-D X-rays from various viewpoints. The most important challenge to be addressed is the lack of texture, the most common feature to recover shape from multiple views. In order to overcome this limitation, we reformulate the problem using a novel multiview segmentation approach where an active contours 3-D surface evolution with level-set implementation is used to recover the shape of bones and prostheses in postoperative joints. The recovered shape may then be used to track 3-D motions in dynamic X-ray sequences to obtain kinematic information.