Chadwell Alix, Kenney Laurence, Prince Michael, Olsen Jennifer, Dyson Matthew
School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
Centre for Human Movement and Rehabilitation, School of Health and Society, University of Salford, Salford, UK.
Prosthet Orthot Int. 2024 Nov 27;49(3):353-357. doi: 10.1097/PXR.0000000000000386.
For research in the field of prosthetics to be representative of clinical realities, studies require inclusion of clinical standard prosthetic sockets. This necessitates involvement of a prosthetist (clinical professional) in any study, which is to truly explore the effectiveness of existing or novel prosthetic technologies. Unfortunately, there is a global shortage of prosthetists. With many technological advances in upper-limb prosthetics coming from engineering focused labs, it is unsurprising that studies are frequently conducted with anatomically intact individuals. In this paper, we present a method to clone the shape of a clinical standard prosthetic socket for research purposes. The technique uses silicone to capture the socket shape; this is then converted into a plaster mold, which can be used to manufacture an identically shaped socket using standard clinical manufacturing techniques. The whole process can be achieved without the involvement of a prosthetist. To validate the proposed technique, molds from an original socket and socket clone were 3D scanned. The distance between the aligned meshes were measured using CloudCompare software. The mean distance between the points on the 2 meshes was 0.16 mm (standard deviation 0.38 mm). This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that the proposed new approach to cloning a clinical standard prosthetic socket is feasible and accurate. This technique will facilitate improvements in the assessment of prosthetic technologies. The process is nondestructive, thus also opening opportunities for socket design and electrode placement research with the removal of confounding factors relating to socket shape.
为了使假肢领域的研究能够代表临床实际情况，研究需要纳入临床标准的假肢接受腔。这就要求在任何研究中都要有假肢矫形师（临床专业人员）参与，以便真正探索现有或新型假肢技术的有效性。不幸的是，全球范围内假肢矫形师短缺。由于上肢假肢的许多技术进步都来自以工程为重点的实验室，因此研究经常在解剖结构完整的个体上进行也就不足为奇了。在本文中，我们提出了一种用于研究目的的克隆临床标准假肢接受腔形状的方法。该技术使用硅胶来获取接受腔形状；然后将其转换为石膏模具，可使用标准临床制造技术来制造形状相同的接受腔。整个过程无需假肢矫形师参与即可完成。为了验证所提出的技术，对原始接受腔和克隆接受腔的模具进行了三维扫描。使用CloudCompare软件测量对齐网格之间的距离。两个网格上点之间的平均距离为0.16毫米（标准差0.38毫米）。这项概念验证研究表明，所提出的克隆临床标准假肢接受腔的新方法是可行且准确的。该技术将有助于改进假肢技术的评估。该过程是非破坏性的，因此也为去除与接受腔形状相关的混杂因素的接受腔设计和电极放置研究开辟了机会。
