IUPS/APS Newsroom March 29-April 6
San Diego Convention Center
Hall E Registration Area/Flex Unit
Telephone: 619.525.6228
Contact: Donna Krupa
(703) 967-2751 (cell)
(301) 634-7209 (office, outside IUPS dates)
Movie Techniques, MRI/CT
Data Combine With Computer Modeling Of Knee/Patella To Aid Surgery; Toward
A Diagnostic Tool To Check Cartilage Stress, Cerebral Palsy Outcomes
San Diego (April 3, 2005) – Take the kinds of movie
techniques that allow animation with true-life action, throw in an
anatomically-based muscle, ligament, tendon, bone and soft-tissue geometries
dataset, and add individual patient MRI or CT scan data.
What you have is a powerful tool to direct and then
check surgical procedures, with the potential to study the effects of drug
therapy and disease on a specific physiological system and throughout the
body.
In the knee/patella area, researchers at the Auckland
University Bioengineering Institute developed a patella articulation knee
computer model that successfully showed reductions in kneecap strain that
matched earlier literature. Two studies involved corrective procedures to
reduce cartilage stress and another assessed literature on surgical outcomes
of muscle length changes for children with cerebral palsy.
The work done by Justin W. Fernandez and Peter J.
Hunter in Auckland, New Zealand is part of the International Union of
Physiological Sciences (IUPS) Physiome Project, which helped develop the
modeling framework to investigate soft tissue and general musculo-skeletal
problems. Using the physical geometries and characteristic responses of
tissues to loading, computers calculate the forces and contact stresses at
the joints, a patient-specific profile is generated using morphing
techniques based on the individual’s magnetic resonance or computed
tomography data.
*Paper presentation: “An anatomically based
patient specific model of patella articulation: Towards a diagnostic tool,”
12:30 p.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday April 5, Physiology session/abstract: 902.15;
board #A15. On view 7:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. Hunter is presenting the research
at the 35th Congress of the IUPS in San Diego, March 31 - April 5,
2005. Prior to the IUPS Congress, the Physiome Project will hold a
satellite meeting in San Diego, March 28-30, “Computational physiology:
from genome to physiome.”
Reducing cartilage stress points: toward future
applications in diagnosis
The two model procedures being reported in San Diego
involved reducing cartilage stress. High joint stress can lead to general
knee pain and osteoarthritis. That logically leads to the next step with
this approach which is to serve as a diagnostic tool, surgical aid and
clinical outcome measurement. Those steps would link the current modeling
framework at the organ level with the underlying cell level microstructure
overlaid with still digital and moving images of the individual patient.
“Eventually, modeling across spatial scales will allow
us to extend the model’s scope to investigate the effects of disease and
drugs and their effects on the whole body,” Hunter said.
In the other main application so far, “Our full knee
model has also been used to assess literature describing muscle length
surgery for children with cerebral palsy,” Fernandez noted. “Our model
presents virtual simulation of a subject walking, showing joint angles and
muscle lengths, while comparing this with the normal population.”
Funding: The
Fernandez-Hunter research was funded by a Bright Future scholarship and a
New Zealand New Economy Research Fund grant. Fernandez is now a research
fellow at the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering,
University of Melbourne, Australia.
***
The 35th Congress of the International Union of
Physiological Sciences is in San Diego, March 31 - April 5, 2005. The
Congress (http://www.iups2005.org/)
is organized by the six member societies of the U.S. National Committee of
the IUPS,
the American Physiological Society,
the Society for Neuroscience,
the Microcirculatory Society,
the Society of General Physiologists,
the Biomedical Engineering Society, and
the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, under the auspices
of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
The IUPS conference, held every four years, runs
concurrently this year with Experimental Biology 2005 at the San Diego
Convention Center.
The American Physiological Society (APS), which is
hosting IUPS, was founded in 1887 to foster basic and applied science, much
of it relating to human health. The Bethesda, MD-based Society has more than
10,000 members and publishes nearly 4,000 articles every year in its 14
peer-reviewed journals. In May, APS received the Presidential Award
for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM).
***
Editor’s Note: For further information or to
schedule an interview with a member of the research team, please contact
Donna Krupa at the IUPS/APS newsroom @ 619.525.6228 (March 31-April
6), or (703) 967-2751 (cell) or (301) 634-7209 (office), or Stacy Brooks at
240.432.9697 (cell) or 301.634.7253 (office).
A searchable online program for IUPS and EB is at
http://www.faseb.org/meetings/eb2005/call/default.htm
