Orthopaedic biomaterials research has moved into making “smart” tissue engineered materials that can be replaced to restore normal function and integrity of bone. Conventional approaches have not been able to design and fabricate bone implants that last longer than 15 years once implanted. New materials designed to possess biologically-inspired chemistries and nanoscale architectures, which mim...

The use of metallic implants has revolutionised the practice of orthopaedic surgery. While the safety and biocompatibility of these devices are excellent, a small percentage becomes infected. These infections are due to the formation of a biofilm that harbours bacteria encased in a complex extracellular matrix. The matrix serves as a barrier to immune surveillance as well as limiting the biocid...

Preclinical research is the initial prerequisite to determining the efficacy of an implant for eventual translation into the clinical arena. Once a spinal implant has been validated through benchtop mechanical testing, analytical modeling, and in vitro evaluation, it is often useful to conduct an in vivo study using animal models to assess the interactions of the living tissue environment surro...

We propose a new granular crystal sensor and actuator suite based on highly nonlinear solitary waves to offer a compact, inexpensive, and reliable diagnostic instrument for biomedical applications. A granular crystal sensor/actuator composed of tightly packed elastic particles is assembled to generate and retain self-reinforcing, nondispersive diagnostic solitary waves. Via direct contact, this...

The infection rate for any surgical prosthesis insertion should be less than 1% in the first postoperative year. If infection occurs the patients will lose their new found mobility, lose their independence, be hospitalized with sepsis, both local and systemic, and perhaps die. Preoperative and intraoperative measures to prevent infection are well established in orthopaedic surgery but less scie...

Magnesium alloys as degradable implant materials in orthopaedic research received a lot of interest in recent years (Witte et al., 2007a; Xu et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2010). The application of resorbable implant material avoids an implant removal surgery and therewith helps to diminish the costs and the burden for the patient. In comparison to other degradable implant materials like polymers,...

Bone drilling is a common procedure to prepare an implant site during orthopaedic surgery. An increase in temperature during such a procedure can result in thermal ostenecrosis which may delay healing or reduce the stability of the fixation. Therefore it is important to minimize the thermal invasion of bone during drilling. The Taguchi method has been applied to investigate the optimal combinat...

Conventional computer-assisted orthopaedic surgery (CAOS) involves many time-consuming and patient-dependent repeatable tasks in which automation is highly desirable. Relevant work includes the development of efficient and accurate automatic solutions for CAOS tasks such as region-of-interest segmentation (Chu 2014), implant fitting (Wu 2015), and surgical planning (Hefny 2015). Automation requ...