Establishment of classified pelvic and acetabular fractures and their significance

Objective To establish three-dimensional(3D) digital classification models of pelvic and acetabular fractures and evaluate its significance in orthopaedic clinical and teaching work.Methods Pelvic of a healthy male volunteer was scanned with CT,and the resulting data in DICOM format was imported to Mimics10.01 software to reconstruct the model of the pelvis and acetabulum respectively.Based on the standards of AO/ASIF classification of pelvic and acetabular fractures,various types of fractures were simulated.The fracture fragments were displayed with different colors.The completed fracture models were saved in STL format.By use of VTK and Qt softwares,the software of 3D digital models of the pelvic and acetabulum fractures was developed based on the completed 3D models of the pelvis and acetabulum fractures.Ten junior orthopaedic doctors and 20 medical students respectively matched the traditional two-dimensional(2D) atlas and 3D digital models to the imaging data of patients with pelvic and acetabulum fractures,and made a preliminary evaluation.Results In the developed software of 3D digital models of pelvic and acetabulum fractures,the operator could realize the rotation and scaling of 3D models,thus observing the fracture models at any angle.Nine junior orthopaedic doctors and 18 medical students evaluated that the 3D models of the pelvis and acetabulum fractures were more conducive to the comprehension and judgment of AO/ASIF classification of pelvic and acetabular fractures.Conclusions The 3D models of classified fractures of pelvic and acetabular are lifelike,intuitive,three-dimensional and dynamic and are helpful in orthopaedic clinical and teaching work.