Measurement of pelvic tilt and rotation on AP radiographs using HipRecon: Validation and comparison to other parameters

In this paper, we present and evaluate HipRecon, a noncommercial software package that simultaneously calculates pelvic tilt and rotation from an anteroposterior pelvis radiograph. We asked: What is the (1) accuracy and precision, (2) robustness, and (3) intra-/interobserver reliability/reproducibility of HipRecon to analyze both pelvic tilt and rotation on conventional AP pelvis radiographs? (4) How does the prediction of pelvic tilt on AP pelvis radiographs using HipRecon compare to established measurement methods? We compared the actual pelvic tilt of 20 adult human cadaveric pelvises with the calculated pelvic orientation based on an AP pelvis radiograph using HipRecon software. The pelvises were mounted on a radiolucent fixture and a total of 380 AP pelvis radiographs with different configurations were acquired. In addition, we investigated the correlation between actual tilt and the tilt calculated using HipRecon and seven other established measurement methods. The calculated software accuracy was 0.2 ± 2.0° (-3.6-4.1) for pelvic tilt and 0.0 ± 1.2° (-2.2-2.3, p = 0.39) for pelvic rotation. The Bland-Altman analysis showed values that were evenly and randomly spread in both directions. HipRecon showed excellent consistency for the measurement of pelvic tilt and rotation (intraobserver intraclass-correlation coefficient [ICC]: 0.99 [95% CI: 0.99-0.99] and interobserver ICC 0.99 [95% CI: 0.99-0.99]). Of all eight analyzed methods, the highest correlation coefficient was found for HipRecon (r = 0.98, p < 0.001). In the future, HipRecon could be used to detect changes in patient-specific pelvic orientation, helping to improve clinical understanding and decision-making in pathologies of the hip.