The Digital Twin: A Potential Solution for the Personalized Diagnosis and Treatment of Musculoskeletal System Diseases

Abstract

Due to the high prevalence and rates of disability associated with musculoskeletal system diseases, more thorough research into diagnosis, pathogenesis, and treatments is required. One of the key contributors to the emergence of diseases of the musculoskeletal system is thought to be changes in the biomechanics of the human musculoskeletal system. However, there are some defects concerning personal analysis or dynamic responses in current biomechanical research methodologies. Digital twin (DT) was initially an engineering concept that reflected the mirror image of a physical entity. With the application of medical image analysis and artificial intelligence (AI), it entered our lives and showed its potential to be further applied in the medical field. Consequently, we believe that DT can take a step towards personalized healthcare by guiding the design of industrial personalized healthcare systems. In this perspective article, we discuss the limitations of traditional biomechanical methods and the initial exploration of DT in musculoskeletal system diseases. We provide a new opinion that DT could be an effective solution for musculoskeletal system diseases in the future, which will help us analyze the real-time biomechanical properties of the musculoskeletal system and achieve personalized medicine.

Digital twins for health: a scoping review

“…In a cancer patient, a DT is being utilized to predict the risk of vertebral fracture in metastatic spine cancer patients after stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) to assist in informed decision-making and design of better treatment strategies to benefit these patients [43][44][45][46] .…”

Toward Digital Twin Development for Implant Placement Planning Using a Parametric Reduced-Order Model

“…Currently, digital twins are used in the manufacturing, automobile, and energy industries and have been developed into a form that integrates physical and virtual spaces via continuous information transmission [1][2][3]. Recently, digital twins were adopted in the medical field to build an innovative process for simultaneously performing disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment [4,5]. In the field of dentistry, the digital twin technology is gradually being applied to advance digital dentistry [6].…”