Department Seminar of Rahmil Oren - Autonomous Finite Element Analyses of Femurs with Metastatic Tumors
School of Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Wednesday December 06.12.2023 at 14:00
ZOOM SEMINAR
Autonomous Finite Element Analyses of Femurs with Metastatic Tumors
Oren Rachmil
M.Sc. research under the supervision of Prof. Zohar Yosibash
Computational Mechanics & Experimental Biomechanics Lab
School of Mechanical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Metastatic femoral tumors may lead to pathological fractures during daily activities. A CT-based finite element (FE) analysis of a patient’s femurs was shown to assist orthopedic surgeons in making informed decisions about the risk of fracture and the need for a prophylactic fixation. Improving the accuracy of such analyses requires an automatic and accurate segmentation of the tumors and their automatic inclusion in the FE model.
We present herein a deep learning (DL) algorithm (nnU-Net) to automatically segment lytic tumors within the femur that are then integrated into Simfini, an autonomous finite element (AFE) framework that is used in clinical practice to assist orthopedic oncologists in determining the risk of pathological femoral fractures due to metastatic tumors. A comprehensive evaluation of the DL model’s segmentation performance was assessed against two experienced musculoskeletal radiologists from Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
The segmented lytic lesions were then integrated into Simfini that autonomously generated finite element models. Rigorous analyses were conducted using three methodologies: the original approach without tumor segmentation, manual segmentation of lytic tumors, and the innovative automatic DL algorithm.
Results indicate that the DL algorithm may segment lytic femoral tumors in CT scans as accurately as experienced radiologists with similar DSC scores. Additionally, the incorporation of segmented tumors into an AFE model led to elevated principal strains, offering potential enhancements in predicting the risk of pathological femoral fractures. The clinical significance of tumor inclusion in autonomous FE algorithms should be further investigated in follow-on clinical research.
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https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/86497933118
