Patent ID: 7991599

Claim:
A method of selecting a meniscus prosthetic device for a patient from a library of available prosthetic devices, the method comprising: a pre-implantation matching process comprising: a direct geometrical matching process comprising: obtaining an image of the patient's healthy knee, segmenting the knee into components, including a healthy meniscus, and comparing the healthy meniscus to the available prosthetic devices to identify any geometrically suitable prosthetic devices; a correlation parameters-based matching process comprising: obtaining an image of the patient's injured knee, determining one or more correlation parameters for the available prosthetic devices based on anatomical measurements of the injured knee, and comparing the one or more correlation parameters for the available prosthetic devices to an accepted normative data range to identify any correlation-parameter suitable prosthetic devices; and a finite element-based matching process comprising: creating a finite element model of the patient's injured knee based on the image of the patient's injured knee, simulating a loading of the patient's injured knee with an available prosthetic device positioned therein for one or more of the available prosthetic devices, and evaluating a load distribution for the one or more of the available prosthetic devices to identify any finite-element suitable prosthetic devices.