Development of a model to predict 3D femur morphology in infants and young children

The purpose of this study was to develop a predictive model to generate representative 3D paediatric femur models for age 0–3 years based on child characteristics. Computed tomography (CT) images of 79 decedent (age 0–3 years) femurs were used to develop a statistical shape model characterising femur shape. A regression model predicted shape parameters from child characteristics (age, height, and weight). The predictive model demonstrated good fit (R2 = 0.976) in predicting femur shape (surface coordinates) in the test set (n = 17) and thus, can be used to generate representative 3D paediatric femur models in the absence of CT imaging.