Improving Optical Damage Analysis of Knee Implants from an Engineering Perspective

Abstract

In our studies we analyzed the wear and damages of 15 explanted total knee implants. For this purpose, we first reviewed the relevant literature, which showed that most of the available articles are rather medical and do not contain relevant information from an engineering point of view, and those that are relevant from an engineering point of view are rather outdated from today's point of view. Therefore, we have developed an optical damage analysis that can be used to filter out results that are relevant and comparable from an engineering point of view. Our damage analysis was based on an existing and well-established method, which is now outdated and therefore, its further development was highly justified. The developed optical damage analysis was then used to test our samples. We drew conclusions, and based on these conclusions, we suggested how to improve further the systems we investigated.