Project Details
Projekt
Evidence-based personalized rehabilitation protocols for uneventful healing with data-driven virtual twins
Applicants
Dr. Benedikt Braun; Professor Dr.-Ing. Stefan Diebels
Subject Area
Mechanics
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548959882
Fracture healing is a complex, multi-scale process that is influenced by various mechanical and biological factors. However, conventional rehabilitation protocols are often based on a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores individual patient differences and can lead to suboptimal healing outcomes. By generating a virtual twin of each patient, this project aims to close this gap. The virtual twin will link real-time data from body-worn sensors with musculoskeletal simulations and provide constraints for patient-specific computer models to simulate the healing process - from the macro-level biomechanics of the bone-implant system to the micro-level cellular activities and mechanobiology. The main objective of the project is the development and establishment of an innovative digital process chain for the realisation of virtual twins of patients with fractures of the lower extremity to enable an individualized treatment and aftercare process improving on the current standard rehabilitation structure with its persistently high complication rates. Therefore, the virtual twin is designed with a holistic approach that combines a wide range of measurement technologies, data analysis, modelling and simulation concepts to represent the entire patient-specific lifecycle of a healing fracture. We assume that the virtual twin enables a personalised healing prediction at an early post-operative point in time, labelled as trajectory of recovery at t=0, which virtually maps the further rehabilitation process. The data collected at later points in time makes the virtual twin dynamic, and the continuing simulations and data analyses transform it into a kind of living system describing the patient’s healing process in a highly individualised way. The project is divided into six work packages that cover the entire spectrum from clinical data collection via wearable sensors (WP1) to clinical validation (WP6). The digital process chain and the resulting virtual twin (WP2) connects all work packages and the different levels of the multi-X fracture healing model. In WP5, the image processing and thus the geometric 3D model creation are realized, while in WP4 the movement analysis and the musculoskeletal simulation take place. The core of the virtual twin is the multi-X healing model to be implemented in WP3, which is intended to predict the healing process based on the data from the other work packages.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
