Typical accuracy and quality control of a process for creating CT-based virtual bone models

A pragmatic method for assessing the accuracy and precision of a given processing pipeline required for converting computed tomography (CT) image data of bones into representative three dimensional (3D) models of bone shapes is proposed. The method is based on coprocessing a control object with known geometry which enables the assessment of the quality of resulting 3D models. At three stages of the conversion process, distance measurements were obtained and statistically evaluated. For this study, 31 CT datasets were processed. The final 3D model of the control object contained an average deviation from reference values of -1.07 ± 0.52 mm standard deviation (SD) for edge distances and -0.647 ± 0.43 mm SD for parallel side distances of the control object. Coprocessing a reference object enables the assessment of the accuracy and precision of a given processing pipeline for creating CT-based 3D bone models and is suitable for detecting most systematic or human errors when processing a CT-scan. Typical errors have about the same size as the scan resolution.