Novel imaging modalities and their application in orthopedics: added value from bench to bedside.

Driven by the ever growing importance of medical imaging in diagnosis, surgical
planning and the clinical follow-up of orthopedic pathology, more recently, a whole
range of novel medical imaging technologies have been made available to the
orthopaedic community, and more specifically, our research facility. Thus far however
not all of these new technologies are or can be immediately applied. Furthermore it is
not yet clear in which research or clinical aspects of the respective orthopaedic
disciplines (foot and ankle surgery, knee, hip and shoulder arthroplasty, spine
surgery, etc.) these modalities have most potential. Therefor this thesis project aims
at further exploring and identifying novel orthopaedic applications from research
bench up to bedside for PET-CT imaging [1], biplanar X-ray imaging [2, 3], ultrasound
imaging [4, 5] and dynamic CT imaging [6]. Furthermore this dissertation will focus on
defining their added value over currently used imaging modalities and, if applicable,
initialize their transfer from a research tool (bench) to a clinically usable tool
(bedside).