Contactless femoral implant stability monitoring in cementless total hip arthroplasty, A step towards clinical implementation

The clinical implementation of currently used devices for intraoperative fixation monitoring of femoral implants via vibration-based methods in cementless total hip arthroplasty is challenging, due to practical and regulatory issues. Motivated by the effectiveness of electromagnetic excitation in similar dental applications, this study investigates the use of electromagnetic excitation for femoral implant stability monitoring during cementless total hip arthroplasty. The results obtained from electromagnetic excitation were largely consistent with reference results obtained through impact excitation, with a Pearson Correlation Coefficient of 0.79 in the 0.1-8 kHz frequency band. Moreover, the peak frequencies obtained via the two methods yielded a relative difference of 0.20 ± 0.22 %. Next, the excitation device was successfully utilized in conjunction with a laser vibrometer to monitor the stability of the femoral implant during an in vitro insertion, proving the feasibility of contactless implant stability monitoring. These results indicate the promising potential of this contactless method for clinical implementation.