Search Results (2)

Background: Fractures of the distal radius are common, particularly among young men and elderly women, often leading to painful wrist arthritis, especially if the joint surface has been affected. Traditional treatments of the wrist, such as full or partial wrist fusion, limit movement, and common wrist prostheses have high complication rates. Regenerative medicine and 3D bioprinting offer the potential for personalized joint replacements. Methods: This study evaluates using the contralateral radius as a template for creating customized distal radius prostheses. Bilateral CT scans of healthy wrists were analyzed to assess the shape and symmetry of the distal radius using a landmark-free morphometric method. Instead of comparing defined landmarks, the entire surface of the radius is analyzed employing dense point- and deformation-based morphometry to detect subtle morphological differences, providing an unbiased and more accurate comparison of the overall deformations in the distal radii. Results: results show strong intraindividual symmetry in joint surfaces. Interindividual comparisons revealed significant morphological variations, particularly gender-specific differences. Conclusions: These findings support the use of the contralateral radius as a template for the replaced side. At the same time, the interindividual results endorse the approach of pursuing personalized prostheses as the optimal replacement for distal joint surfaces. The increasing improvement of 3D-printed prostheses promises new methods for better outcomes in distal radius arthrosis after intraarticular fractures. Further research into clinical applications and biocompatible 3D printing materials is recommended. Full article

The possibility of quick and cheap recognition of a fish species from a single dermal scale would be interesting in a wide range of contexts. The methods of geometric morphometry appear to be quite promising, although wide studies comparing different approaches are lacking. We aimed to apply two methods of geometric morphometry, landmark-based and outline-based, on a dataset of scales from five different teleost species: Danio rerio, Dicentrarchus labrax, Mullus surmuletus, Sardina pilchardus, and Sparus aurata. For the landmark-based method the R library “geomorph” was used. Some issues about landmark selection and positioning were addressed and, for the first time on fish scales, an approach with both landmarks and semilandmarks was set up. For the outline-based method the R library “Momocs” was used. Despite the relatively low number of scales analyzed (from 11 to 81 for each species), both methods achieved quite good clustering of all the species. In particular, the landmark-based method used here gave generally higher R² values in testing species clustering than the outline-based method, but it failed to distinguish between a few couples of species; on the other hand, the outline-based method seemed to catch the differences among all the couples except one. Larger datasets have the potential to achieve better results with outline-based geometric morphometry. This latter method, being free from the problem of recognizing and positioning landmarks, is also the most suitable for being automatized in future applications. Full article