Data for: Tuning and validation of a virtual mechanical testing pipeline for condylar stress fracture risk assessment in Thoroughbred racehorses

Condylar stress fracture of the third metacarpal/metatarsal bone (MC3/MT3)
in Thoroughbred racehorses is a common catastrophic injury, putting both
the racehorse and the jockey at risk. Microdamage forms in the distal MC3
and may result in strain elevation and higher risk of stress fracture,
directly and through focal osteolysis resulting from the associated damage
repair by remodelling in the condylar parasagittal grooves (PSG). Standing
computed tomography (sCT) is a practical screening tool for detecting
fatigue-induced structural changes, but clinical interpretation remains
subjective. The goal of this study was to develop and validate an
sCT-based, subject-specific finite element analysis pipeline for virtual
mechanical testing of the distal MC3. Twelve (n = 12) MC3
condyles with available ex vivo strain were selected. Half of the
specimens were used for tuning Young’s modulus in fatigue sites, and the
other half were used to evaluate the validity of the pipeline in
predicting PSG strain. The tuned model improved the prediction of strain
and predicted higher strain in bones with PSG lysis over the untuned
model, which is an essential feature for a diagnostic screening tool. The
presented pipeline can assist clinicians with the interpretation of
sCT-detectable structural changes and, ultimately, with the assessment of
condylar fracture risk in racing Thoroughbreds. The standing
computed tomography (sCT) images used in the linked manuscript can be
found here. Specimens are labeled with unique IDs, which can be found in
condyleID.txt. Essential DICOM tags are embedded in all of the image sets.