Tallman, team win best presentation at Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting
Joint replacement is one of the most common orthopaedic procedures, and loss of implant fixation, or aseptic loosening, is the leading cause of revision surgery following primary joint replacement.
Tyler Tallman, an assistant professor in AAE, and collaborators from Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT developed a new diagnostic technique that could enable early, cost-effective, and accurate diagnosis of implant loosening. Their work recently was recognized at the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) 2019 Annual Meeting.
The group, which also includes Professor Kartik M. Varadarajan (Massachusetts General Hospital) and Professor A. John Hart (MIT), won best podium presentation in the Orthopaedic Implant Section at the meeting, held Feb. 2-5 in Austin, Texas.
Varadarajan delivered the presentation, entitled “Non-invasive Diagnosis of Aseptic Implant Loosening via Electrical Impedance Tomography,” that computationally explored the feasibility of using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) in combination with smart, self-sensing bone cement to detect loss of implant fixation — or cracks within the cement and implant migration. Despite the clinical need, prevailing medical imaging modalities, such as radiographs, struggle reliably to detect aseptic loosening. Development of new technologies for early and cost-effective diagnosis of this problem, such as the method presented in Varadarajan, Hart and Tallman’s work, is therefore critical.
“This is a particularly interesting research area for me because it utilizes skills and expertise our research group has in self-sensing nanocomposites and non-invasive conductivity imaging,” Tallman says. “Now, however, we’re looking inside of people rather than aerospace structures.”
Tallman added working with Varadarajan and Hart has been very rewarding.
“This is a highly multi-disciplinary problem,” Tallman says. “Together, I think we have the expertise needed to profoundly impact the state of the art.”