During the past year our group has been developing HipNav, a system which helps surgeons determine optimal, patient-specific acetabular implant placement and accurately achieve the desired implant placement during surgery. HipNav includes three components: a pre-operative planner, a range of motion simulator, and an intra-operative tracking and guidance system. The goals of the current HipNav system are to: 1) reduce dislocations following total hip replacement surgery due to acetabular malposition; 2) determine and potentially increase the “safe” range of motion; 3) reduce wear debris resulting from impingement of the implant’s femoral neck with the acetabular rim; and 4) track in real-time the position of the pelvis and acetabulum during surgery. The original implementation of the HipNav system was a proof-of-concept prototype which was useful for demonstrating the efficacy of this technology in-vitro. As the HipNav system progressed towards a clinical implementation, our effor...
David A. Simon, Branislav Jaramaz, Mike Blackwell,