Article

Lower limb alignment is important for the internal loading conditions in the
knee. In this study, we aimed to evaluate a new imageless, non-invasive method
for quantifying frontal plane alignment by direct comparison against CT. To
determine the mechanical femoral-tibial angle (mFTA), functional posture analysis
was performed in 15 limbs (13 individuals) using previously published methods for
the minimisation of skin marker artefact together with the functional
identification of joints, and compared against a published regression method.
Whilst the average Functional-mFTA (1.3 + or - 2.3) was not significantly
different (p > 0.25) from the CT-mFTA (1.5 + or - 2.1), the Regression-mFTA (4.7
+ or - 5.6) showed a significant error (p < 0.01). The Functional-mFTA correlated
significantly (R = 0.91; p < 0.0001), with a small bias (0.3 degrees) and agreed
better with the CT-mFTA than the Regression-mFTA (R = 0.76; p < 0.001), which had
a bias of 3.4 degrees. The results demonstrate that the mFTA can be quantified
accurately using an imageless, non-invasive functional approach, which also
offers greater accuracy over regression methods.These new techniques could
provide an accurate, non-invasive approach for quantifying frontal plane
alignment, particularly in cases where X-rays may not be available.
CI - Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS