Quantifying comminution as a measurement of severity of articular injury.

The severity of articular injury caused by a fracture of periarticular bone impacts patient prognosis. There currently are not good, objective methods for grading articular injury severity. Quantification of bone comminution from fracture image data, which has been possible in laboratory studies, may be a promising route. We show that tibial pilon fractures can be discriminated on the basis of de novo surface-apparent energy absorption.