An anatomical atlas to support the virtual planning of hip operations.

Two three-dimensional digitized atlases of a female and a male pelvis were generated to support the virtual 3D-planning of hip operations. Beside the anatomical labeling of bone structures the determination of orthopedic measures, like angles, distances or sizes of contact areas, is important for the planning of hip operations. Thus, each atlas consists of labeled reference CT data sets, a set of landmarks as well as definitions of orthopedic measures and methods for their automatic computation. Furthermore, methods for the automatic transfer of anatomical labels from the atlas to an individual data set are presented resulting in three-dimensional models of the patient's bone structures. The anatomical atlases are designed to replace the interactive, time-consuming pre-processing steps for the virtual 3D operation planning.