Guwahati, Oct 27: The Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G) researchers created an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model to predict the recovery of thigh bone fractures following surgery.
The model has been developed by Dr. Souptick Chanda, assistant professor, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering and his team.
According to reports, the model can be used to assess healing outcomes of different fracture fixation strategies so that an optimum strategy can be chosen for the patient depending on their personal physiologies and fracture type.
By using such AI-based models, it can reduce healing time, and lighten the economic burden and pain for patients who need thigh fracture treatment.
The results of this research have recently been published in the open-source journal, PLoS One in a paper co-authored by Chanda and his research scholar Pratik Nag.
Speaking about the research, Chanda told the media, "AI has tremendous potential when it comes to understanding and predicting complex biological phenomena and hence, can play a big role in health sciences applications."
The research team used a combination of finite element analysis and the AI tool, fuzzy logic, to understand the healing process of fractures after different treatment methods.
Besides this, various bone-growth parameters were used along with a rule-based simulation scheme. The study also examined the influence of different screw-fixation mechanisms to compare the healing efficacies of each process.
The model's healing predictions is accorded well with experimental findings, indicating its dependability and the research is useful because the incidences of thigh bone and hip fractures have increased significantly due to the increasing geriatric population in the world.
IIT-G's AI-based simulation model can potentially help a surgeon choose the right implant or technique before a treatment surgery. In addition to various biological and patient-specific parameters, the model can also account for different clinical phenomena, such as smoking and diabetes.
The model can also be adapted for veterinary fractures, which are physiologically and in various aspects similar to those occurring in human patients.
It may be mentioned that the researchers have also planned to develop a software/app based on the algorithm that can be used in hospitals and other healthcare institutions as part of their fracture treatment protocols.
The IIT-G team is presently collaborating with Dr. Bhaskar Borgohain and his group of orthopaedists from the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences Hospital, Shillong, for animal studies to validate and fine-tune certain parameters.
Further, this research will help increase the accuracy rate in decision-making in orthopaedics, thereby reducing the cost and disease burden associated with fracture recovery.