A low-cost digital templating system for total hip arthroplasty.

Area of Science:

• Orthopedic Surgery
• Medical Imaging Analysis
• Software Development in Medicine

Background:

• Traditional acetate templating for total hip arthroplasty (THA) is inefficient and prone to inaccuracies.
• High costs of current digital templating software limit its widespread adoption in THA.
• There is a need for affordable and accurate digital pre-operative planning tools for THA.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a cost-effective digital templating system for total hip arthroplasty.
• To compare the accuracy and reliability of the low-cost system against an industry-standard digital templating solution.

Main Methods:

• A novel, low-cost digital templating software was developed using C#.
• Three orthopedic surgeons evaluated 20 anteroposterior pelvis X-rays using both the new software and an industry standard.
• Statistical analysis included intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and Bland-Altman plots to assess accuracy and interrater reliability.

Main Results:

• Both the low-cost and industry-standard systems achieved high accuracy, with ICC values around .90 for component size and femoral neck cut.
• Bland-Altman analysis confirmed similar predictive accuracy for implant size between the two systems.
• Interrater reliability was comparable between the developed low-cost system and the existing industry standard.

Conclusions:

• The validated low-cost digital THA templating system demonstrates comparable accuracy and reliability to expensive commercial software.
• This affordable system has the potential to increase the accessibility of digital pre-operative planning for total hip arthroplasty.
• The developed software is up to 12 times less expensive than current market options, offering a significant cost-saving advantage.