Automated correction angle calculation in high tibial osteotomy planning

Abstract

High tibial osteotomy correction angle calculation is a process that is usually performed manually or in a semi-automated way. The process, according to the Miniaci method, is divided into several stages to find specific points: the center of the femoral head, the edges of the tibial plateau, the Fujisawa point, the center of the ankle joint, and the Hinge point. In this paper, we proposed an end-to-end approach that consists of different techniques for finding each point. We used YOLOv4 to detect regions of interest. To identify the center of the femoral head, we used the YOLOv4 and the Hough transform. For the other points, we used a combined method of YOLOv4 with the ASM/AAM algorithm and YOLOv4 with image processing algorithms. Our fully-automated method achieved a mean error rate of 0.5$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ (0$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ –2.76$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ ) ICC 0.99 (0.98–0.99) 95% CI on our own dataset of standing long-leg Anterior Posterior view X-rays. This might be the first method that automatically calculates the correction angle of high tibial osteotomy.