Morphological Studies on the Wear and Corrosion of 316L Stainless Steel Dynamic Compression Plates.

316L stainless steel dynamic compression plates (DCP) extracted from four patients with varying periods of implantation as well as an unused 316L stainless steel DCP were studied with the aid of the Scanning electron microscope (SEM). Image processing and computer vision such as binarization, filtering, edge detection and contour finding were used to extract details from the SEM micrographs with emphasis on the possible impacts of duration of implantation and wear on the microstructure of the metallic material. Results obtained show that there were considerable impacts on the microstructure of the stainless steel implants over time, with higher impacts observed for implants with longer period of implantation.