AUTHOR=Alkhatatbeh Tariq , Wang Jia Lin , Zhang Wei Jia , Li Yong Wei , Xia Yong , Wang Wei TITLE=A new automatic stitching method for full-length lower limb radiography JOURNAL=Frontiers in Surgery VOLUME=9 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/surgery/articles/10.3389/fsurg.2022.1000074 DOI=10.3389/fsurg.2022.1000074 ISSN=2296-875X ABSTRACT=

Full-length lower limb x-rays are used to diagnose and plan surgical procedures, such as Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) and High Tibial Osteotomy (HTO). Due to the size limitation of digital radiography (DR), panoramic x-ray images cannot be obtained in a single exposure, necessitating multiple exposures and image stitching. In favor of manually constructing full-length x-ray images, we propose a new feature-based automated method for stitching together x-ray images. This new method is based on Canny algorithm, which detects and aligns bone edges before fusing them using a Wavelet form domain. Twenty-eight sets of lower limb x-ray images obtained from our hospital have been stitched and evaluated. The hip, knee, and ankle (HKA) angle was computed in two different ways then compared to manually stitched x-ray images by an expert. The stitching time was only three seconds, and the P-value was P = 0.974, and an accuracy rate of 100% was found. This method demonstrated greater precision and speed than both manually stitched x-ray images and previously published methods.