3D Reconstruction of Phalangeal and Metacarpal Bones of Male Judo Players and Sedentary Men by MDCT Images.

This study has been performed to reveal hand bone peculiarities of elite male judoists by comparing their phalangeal and metacarpal bones with those of sedentary men on the basis of biometric ratio of the bones by means of three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) images. For this purpose, the axial images of the right and left hands of 8 elite male judo players (mean age: 22.0 ± 2.9 years, mean weight: 64.0 ± 4.9 kg) and 8 sedentary men (mean age: 26.0 ± 2.8 years, mean weight: 69.0 ± 3.6 kg) were obtained from MDCT. After semi-automatic segmentation and manual editing, the tracings of bone surfaces were stacked and overlaid to be reconstructed as the 3D images by the 3D program. All biometrical measurements of the reconstructed images of the bones were automatically calculated by this program to analyze statistically. This study showed that the differences between biometric ratios of judoist and sedentary men's hand bones were significant contrary to null hypothesis which was established as there is no difference between biometric hand bone ratios of these men of both groups. Therefore null hypothesis was rejected. Author suggests that intense clutching actions practised in judo sports can most probably lead to some hand bone proliferations. 3D reconstructed results belonging to the judo players and sedentary men help orthopaedists to diagnose pathological formations related to hand bones of judoists and may be used for anatomical education in medicine faculties, respectively. We hope that the results from the biometric and reconstructive techniques carried out in this work will contribute to the present knowledge on judoist and shed light on the future studies on sports medicine related to skeletal structure of other sportsmen. Key pointsImage processing of hands of sedentary man and male judo players.3D models of hands of those men by using MDCT images.The results from those models compared in terms of volume, surface areas, and length changes for all individual hand bones.