Patent ID: 8078255

Claim:
A system for virtually reconstructing a fractured bone, comprising: a memory with software stored therein; and a processor configured with the software to: match fracture surfaces of an imaged fractured bone with a data aligned rigidity constrained exhaustive search (DARCES) surface matching algorithm that uses fracture surface data sets to produce a transformed sample data set for at least one of the fracture surfaces; match the fracture surfaces with an iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm that uses the transformed sample data set; and minimize a mean-squared error between the matched fracture surfaces based on iterative angular perturbations until a desired reconstruction of the fractured bone is achieved; and wherein the processor is further configured with the software to: receive image slices corresponding to the imaged bone having a hairline fracture, the image slices each comprising a plurality of pixel blocks; fit quadratic polynomial functions to inner and outer contours of the imaged bone for select pixel blocks less than the entire plurality of the pixel blocks for each of the images slices; iteratively sample the select pixel blocks based on Markov random field modeling and maximum a posteriori estimation to visualize the hairline fracture; and reconstruct the bone at the hairline fracture site in a manner to mimic the natural bone healing process in the absence of any surgical intervention.