A digital database of wrist bone anatomy and carpal kinematics

The skeletal wrist consists of eight small, intricately shaped carpal bones. The motion of these bones is complex, occurs in three dimensions, and remains incompletely defined. Our previous efforts have been focused on determining the in vivo three-dimensional (3-D) kinematics of the normal and abnormal carpus. In so doing we have developed an extensive database of carpal bone anatomy and kinematics from a large number of healthy subjects. The purpose of this paper is to describe that database and to make it available to other researchers. CT volume images of both wrists from 30 healthy volunteers (15 males and 15 females) were acquired in multiple wrist positions throughout the normal range of wrist motion. The outer cortical surfaces of the carpal bones, radius and ulna, and proximal metacarpals were segmented and the 3-D motion of each bone was calculated for each wrist position. The database was constructed to include high-resolution surface models, measures of bone volume and shape, and the 3-D kinematics of each segmented bone. The database does not include soft tissues of the wrist. While there are numerous digital anatomical databases, this one is unique in that it includes a large number of subjects and it contains in vivo kinematic data as well as the bony anatomy.