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The IHE Summer Studentship Scheme gives engineering students the opportunity to spend 8 weeks working with clinicians on an interdisciplinary project. Students gain exposure to the clinical setting, interaction with clinical teams and invaluable hands-on experience.

The UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (MPBE) Athena SWAN committee has generously funded one of these studentships for the past three years. It is awarded to a female student who would not have otherwise had the opportunity to participate.

This year, the lucky recipient was Biomedical Engineering student, Chia Lee, who spent 8-weeks at the , here in London.聽

Why did the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital studentship appeal to you?聽
I found out about the RNOH studentship through my department, Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. Out of a list of options, I was immediately intrigued by the project titled 鈥淪tudying the Variability in the Shape of the Intramedullary Femoral Canal Using Statistical Modelling鈥�. Having enrolled in the Solid Mechanics module in my third year, I was introduced to hip replacement. The project appealed to me as it offered an opportunity to explore the surgical planning aspects that contribute to the positioning accuracy of the prosthetic components.聽

Can you tell us a bit about the project you worked on at RNOH?
To provide a brief overview of the hip joint, it is a ball and socket joint in which a connection is formed between the acetabulum socket of the pelvis and the head of the femur. When a total hip replacement is performed, the worn hip joint is replaced with an artificial joint. During the surgery, the bone on the acetabulum and femur will be prepared, allowing the insertion of the prosthetic implants - acetabular cup and femoral stem on the respective bone.

My project mainly focused on the femoral part of total hip replacement, where I contributed by constructing statistical shape models (SSMs) of the intramedullary femoral canal for both genders on Simpleware ScanIP. The SSMs can describe the variability of the canal shapes among the samples, which helps inform the planning of the implant placement, as the canal essentially dictates the final fit of the femoral stem. To build an SSM, I extracted the femoral canal 3D model from the CT scans, which involve operations such as segmentation, co-registration, Boolean subtraction, defeaturing and anatomical alignment. I then applied Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for mean shape generation and point mapping between each input shape and the mean shape, which then allowed the modes of variation to be assessed. The steps are required for understanding the canal鈥檚 anatomical characteristics.

Later, I was given an opportunity to contribute to another project focused on improving the fit of a new-generation custom acetabular implant as an inter-observer. To report differences between my measurements and my PhD colleague鈥檚, I collected data on the discrepancies between the preoperative and postoperative acetabular cup positions based on CT-generated 3D models. The parameters measured included the centre of rotation, inclination, anteversion and the achieved bone-implant contact surface area. Inter-observer variability was then analysed on GraphPad Prism. I鈥檓 pleased to share that the results I obtained will contribute to publications, and I will be listed as a co-author alongside my research colleagues.聽

How do you think it will benefit your studies or future career aspirations?聽
Apart from the computational work, I had the privilege to attend the operation theatre and observe Prof Alister perform a hip revision surgery. I have learned about the importance of communication and cooperation between surgeons and engineers in developing pioneering healthcare technology through this occasion. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the research team at RNOH. I am grateful to my clinical and academic supervisors, Dr Johann Henckel and Dr Anna Di Laura, for their invaluable guidance. Also, I appreciate the support from my PhD colleagues, Angelika and Sara, as they were always available to offer advice, ensuring the smooth progression of the project. This experience has confirmed my passion for this field and will truly benefit my future studies.