Gait analysis is an indispensable tool for scientific assessment and treatment of individuals whose ability to walk is impaired. The high cost of installation and operation are a major limitation for wide-spread use in clinical routine. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) could significantly reduce the required instrumentation. A mobile phone could be all equipment necessary for 3D gait analysis. MediaPipe Pose provided by Google Research is such a Machine Learning approach for human body tracking from monocular RGB video frames that is detecting 3D-landmarks of the human body. Aim of this study was to analyze the accuracy of gait phase detection based on the joint landmarks identified by the AI system. Motion data from 10 healthy volunteers walking on a treadmill with a fixed speed of 4.5km/h (Callis, Sprintex, Germany) was sampled with a mobile phone (iPhone SE 2nd Generation, Apple). The video was processed with Mediapipe Pose (Version 0.9.1.0) using custom python software. Gait phases (Initial Contact - IC and Toe Off - TO) were detected from the angular velocities of the lower legs. For the determination of ground truth, the movement was simultaneously recorded with the AS-200 System (LaiTronic GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria). The number of detected strides, the error in IC detection and stance phase duration was calculated. In total, 1692 strides were detected from the reference system during the trials from which the AI-system identified 679 strides. The absolute mean error (AME) in IC detection was 39.3 ± 36.6 ms while the AME for stance duration was 187.6 ± 140 ms. Landmark detection is a challenging task for the AI-system as can clearly be seen be the rate of only 40% detected strides. As mentioned by Fadillioglu et al., error in TO-detection is higher than in IC-detection.
Cemented modular metal backed total hip prostheses have the theoretical advantage to allow different inlays to be used. Asymetric or snap inlays are some of the options. First attempts with this kind of implant failed due to PE quality. A novel implant has been specifically designed and constructed for the use of cement. In vitro testing has shown results equal to other cemented cups. Aim of this study is to investigate the first clinical results of this implant with special consideration to intraoperative complications, intraoperative change of inlays, postoperative complications and clinical results.
The implant under investigation was a cemented modular acetabular component (C-MIC, ESKA Implants, Germany). The inlays are manufactured of highly crosslinked polyethylene. The standard protocols regarding DVT prophylaxis and antibiosis for HHS and the Barthel index.
We can conclude that the C-MIC acetabular component is safe to use. Due to limitations of this study we are not able to state if THA is superior to hemiarthroplasty in geriatric patients.