Computer assisted preoperative planning of bone fracture reduction: Simulation techniques and new trends.

The development of support systems for surgery significantly increases the likelihood of obtaining satisfactory results. In the case of fracture reduction interventions these systems enable surgery planning, training, monitoring and assessment. They allow improvement of fracture stabilization, a minimizing of health risks and a reduction of surgery time. Planning a bone fracture reduction by means of a computer assisted simulation involves several semiautomatic or automatic steps. The simulation deals with the correct position of osseous fragments and fixation devices for a fracture reduction. Currently, to the best of our knowledge there is no computer assisted methods to plan an entire fracture reduction process. This paper presents an overall scheme of the computer based process for planning a bone fracture reduction, as described above, and details its main steps, the most common proposed techniques and their main shortcomings. In addition, challenges and new trends of this research field are depicted and analyzed.