Physics in medicine and biology
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Percutaneous screw fixation in pelvic trauma surgery is a challenging procedure that often requires long fluoroscopic exposure times and trial-and-error insertion attempts along narrow bone corridors of the pelvis. We report a method to automatically plan surgical trajectories using preoperative CT and assist device placement by augmenting the fluoroscopic scene with planned trajectories. A pelvic shape atlas was formed from 40 CT images and used to construct a statistical shape model (SSM). ⋯ The approach yields a method for both automatic planning of pelvic fracture fixation and augmentation of fluoroscopy for improved surgical precision and safety. The method does not require segmentation of the patient CT, operates without additional hardware (e.g. tracking systems), and is consistent with common workflow in fluoroscopically guided procedures. The approach has the potential to reduce operating time and radiation dose by minimizing trial-and-error attempts in percutaneous screw placement.