Shape adaptation of long bone structures using a contour based approach.

In this work, an approach for mechanically driven shape adaptation of long bone structures is presented which utilizes contour descriptions to track morphological changes at different bone cross sections. A script-based procedure is used to iteratively generate a solid geometry and finite element (FE) model from these contours, perform a stress analysis, and then update the contour shapes using the results of the stress analysis using a prescribed remodeling rule. Because a remeshing operation is performed at each timestep the method is able to effectively simulate large changes in geometry. Several examples of shape adaptation of idealized and geometrically accurate long-bone structures are presented using a variety of remodeling signals and parameters.