Estimating Hip Joint Contact Pressure from Geometric Features

Hip mechanical simulation for estimating pressures within the soft tissues during the loads and motions of daily activities is a common approach to investigate hip joint pathology. Many computational approaches estimate the pressure and contact pressures via finite element methods (FEM) by using 3D meshes of the tissues. Although this type of simulation can provide a good evaluation of hip problems, the process may be very time consuming and unsuitable for fast medical hip simulations. In this chapter, a statistical model is proposed for estimating hip pressures during its movement, by using the geometrical features extracted from 3D meshes of different hip models. The method is tested by examining 25 different hip models during a frequent daily activity.