A preliminary research on virtual knee simulators for knee joint implants design

Purpose: The goal of this paper is to investigate the use of virtual simulation tools, and in particular virtual knee simulators. This kind of tools is mainly important for the design and development of knee joint implants. In fact, achieving long-term clinical success after a total knee replacement - TKR - surgery is dependent on a variety of patient and surgical factors, but it can be directly influenced by implant component design. Method: A literature review has been done to search for the most important characteristics of virtual knee simulators in reference to the mechanical ones used for in-vitro testing. A description of of three kinds of virtual knee simulators was done: the KneeSIM, the Open Knee and the Denver-Kansas computational Knee model. Results and discussion: An analysis of the characteristics of these three computational models was done in order to understand which simulator is best suited for its immediate use, which is the most customizable or which represents the most complete and reliable tool for knee implant design. Conclusion: This paper has outlined a review of a particular category of simulation tools, the virtual knee simulators. These tools are of great interest for orthopaedic product design and development. Some of the knee computational models used in these simulators are also presented, pointing out the main differences and characteristics of three of them: KneeSIM, Open Knee and Denver-Kansas simulator.