Guided Acoustic Wave Method for Monitoring of Bone Fracture Healing

Abstract

Bone fractures represent an increasing medical and social challenge, particularly due to falls and osteoporosis in the elderly. Among these, tibial (shinbone) fractures are the most clinically significant. Proper clinical management requires assessing whether biological healing progresses well and determining when sucient stiness and stability are regained – for example, to decide when to remove artificial fixation. Currently, fracture healing is mainly monitored through functional tests and X-ray imaging, which involves radiation, is costly, and provides no direct information about the mechanical stiness of the healing bone. To overcome these limitations, we propose an ultrasonic approach for continuous monitoring the elasticity changes of the fracture regions during the healing process. By evaluating the propagation characteristics of guided acoustic Lamb waves travelling through the fracture region, our method aims to enable tracking of the healing progress and prediction of the remaining healing time. Using phantom materials that replicate various bone anatomies and fracture types, we obtained initial experimental results with a single-element transmitter–receiver ultrasonic setup, showing excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. In future work, we aim to increase the realism of our phantoms by including various soft-tissue layers and to advance both hardware and software toward an integrated medical device.

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