Automated design of custom femoral stem prosthesis

An automatic custom femoral stem capability has been developed and used to design prosthesis for several difficult cases not amenable to off-the-shelf components. The capability is based on the IDEAS package of programs. Computer tomography scan plates are digitized to generate cross-section profiles of inner and outer cortex. From these profiles a solid model is automatically generated. From the data provided by the solid model and the design characteristics requested by the surgeon a custom prosthesis is automatically generated. Typically the process takes about two hours; the drawing and pictures are sent to the surgeon for approval. After acceptance the data are transferred to a CAM package to generate the machine code