Investigation of Hip Fracture Mechanism and Risk Through Finite Element Modeling and Mechanical Testing

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Shinya Abe

Tampere University, Faculty of Built Environment, Structural Mechanics, Tampere, Finland

Shinya Abe is a doctoral student at Tampere University (former Tampere University of Technology) in Finland and expected to receive his PhD in Mechanical Engineering for biomedical engineering application in 2022. In his PhD research, he has investigated the effect of exercise on hip fracture risk utilizing medical images and finite element modeling. He earned his BS in Sports Science at Northern Michigan University in USA in 2009, where he started his research journey and worked on biomechanics project in sports (alpine skiing and rock climbing) under supervision of Dr. Randall Jensen and Dr. Phillip Watts. His passion for biomechanics led him to pursue his MSc in Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Tampere University of Technology (2013), where he found the perfect opportunity to apply his sports science background in biomedical engineering application and started current project under supervision of Dr. Harri Sievänen, Dr. Jari Hyttinen, and Dr. Reijo Kouhia.

Harri Sievänen

UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research

Dr. Harri Sievänen has been Research Director of the UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research (Tampere, Finland) since 2010, Chief Scientific Officer of Injeq Oy, a Tampere-based medtech startup company since 2018, and Adjunct Professor in biomedical engineering in Tampere University since 1994. He received MSc and ScD degrees in biomedical engineering from Tampere University of Technology in 1985 and 1991, respectively. Dr. Sievänen has held several laboratory and research positions at the UKK Institute and Tampere University of Technology during the years 1986─2009. During his 35-year career covering broadly the field of biomedical engineering, he has been active in multiple clinical and experimental research projects on accelerometry, bioimpedance, biomechanics, bone densitometry, electrocardiography, electromyography, magnetic resonance imaging, physical performance, quantitative computed tomography, signal processing, and ultrasound. His current h-index is 72, and he has published about 340 peer-reviewed scientific articles with more than 17200 citations.

Collection Overview

Hip fracture is a major public health problem leading to high rates of disability, morbidity, and mortality in the elderly. The annual hip fracture incidents and consequent financial burden are increasing considerably due to aging populations worldwide. The hip fracture can be caused by various situations such as falls, motor vehicle and other accidents, and rarely even under normal physiological loading (e.g., while standing or walking). To address this problem, over the last few decades, the mechanism of hip fracture has been investigated intensively through finite element (FE) modeling and (destructive) mechanical testing. The development of the subject-specific proximal femur FE model has also been spotlighted due to its potentially higher prediction accuracy for the fracture risk compared to the traditional BMD-based prediction. Such predicted fracture risk can be utilized to recommend appropriate nonpharmacological or pharmacological therapy to high-risk individuals to prevent fracture.

For the FE methods, this Method Collection calls for papers describing the following topic(s): image segmentation, density-based inhomogeneous material property mapping, implementation of anisotropic material properties, constitutive linear or nonlinear material modeling, failure criteria, quasi-static or dynamic simulation, consideration on strain-rate dependency of mechanical properties, etc. For the mechanical testing, it calls for: experimental setting (e.g., device set-up, loading angles), loading rate, strain field measurement via strain gauges or digital image correlation (DIC), and validation method for corresponding FE models. This collection aims to facilitate 1) adoption of state-of-the-art methodologies in future studies and 2) use of similar set-ups to enable the reliable comparisons between the studies.