An approach based on auscultatory percussion, a technique used by some orthopedists both for bone fracture detection and bone fracture healing assessment, is described. Low-frequency, low-intensity mechanical power, very much like the finger tap of orthopedists, is used to evaluate the vibrational response of the bone. The novel element is the data processing, which incorporates specialized preprocessing and a neural network for estimating fractured bone strength. In addition, a new mathematical model for the vibrational response of a fractured limb, which provides data to design and test the neural network processing scheme, is presented. An experimental procedure is described for acquiring real data from animal and human fractures in a form necessary for neural network input.

Highways play an important role in countries' economy improvement as they are the major transportation facilities. Highway construction project needs effective planning method to overcome its complicity. Line of Balance is the most effective technique for scheduling such projects. Computerization of this technique to cover highway construction is very powerful to obtain the full advantages of this technique as computer-based program can simplify the mission of end users. The software was build using Visual Basic to ensure flexible code and interactive user-interface. The developed software was verified and validated through extensive testing during and after its building. The result of test showed its correctness and effectiveness to attain objectives.

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A method is proposed to estimate the strength of a healing fractured bone. A four electrical network model of the low frequency (50Hz-1 kHz) transverse vibration response taly. port of a healing fractured bone is derived using Timoshenko beam theory. A back-propagation neural net with one hidden layer processes computer simulated bone fracture model data, and classifies it with respect to the fracture gap stiffness, relative to intact bone. The effect on classification accuracy of number of hidden units and preprocessing of the data is evaluated. Vibration measurements from a rabbit fracture model and clinical patient data are also presented.