Docking Robustness of Patient Specific Surgical Guides for Joint Replacement Surgery

In joint replacement surgery, patient specific surgical guides (PSSGs) are used for accurate alignment of implant components. PSSGs are designed preoperatively to have a geometric fit with the patient's bone such that the incorporated guidance for drilling and cutting is instantly aligned. The surgeon keeps the PSSG in position with a pushing force, and it is essential that this position is maintained while drilling or cutting. Hence, the influence of the location and direction of the pushing force should be minimal. The extent that the pushing force may vary is what we refer to as docking robustness. In this article, we present a docking robustness framework comprising the following quantitative measures and graphical tool. Contact efficiency ηc is used for the quantification of the selected bone–guide contact. Guide efficiency ηg is used for the quantification of the whole guide including an application surface whereon the surgeon can push. Robustness maps are used to find a robust location for the application surface based on gradient colors. Robustness R is a measure indicating what angular deviation is minimally allowed at the worst point on the application surface. The robustness framework is utilized in an optimization of PSSG dimensions for the distal femur. This optimization shows that 12 contacts already result in a relatively high contact efficiency of 0.74 ± 0.02 (where the maximum of 1.00 is obtained when the guide is designed for full bone–guide contact). Six contacts seem to be insufficient as the obtained contact efficiency is only 0.18 ± 0.02.