Investigation of stress distribution in healthy and arthritic knee joints after registering 3D files on the radiographic images

Arthritis of the knee is one of the leading health problems in people, and most knee surgeries have been for this reason. This disease occurs mostly in old age, spreads slowly, and affects the knee joint components. Since arthritis over time causes the destruction of the articular cartilage in the knee, therefore, the destruction of this joint is discussed and investigated according to the applied stresses. By entering CT scan and MRI images into Mimix software, 3D models of the knee are extracted and by using a dedicated software developed for the analysis of radiographic images based on the programming in the MATLAB GUI environment, the 3D CT scan files are matched to the radiographic images. The final 3D model has been created using Solidwork software, and by running numerical simulations in Abaqus software, the stresses on the cartilages have been calculated for healthy and arthritic knees. The results showed that the amount of stress in the middle side of the joint is always higher than on the lateral side, and this difference will be greater in the arthritic joint than in the healthy joint.