Title
Probabilistic biomechanical finite element simulations: whole-model classical hypothesis testing based on upcrossing geometry.
Abstract
Statistical analyses of biomechanical finite element (FE) simulations are frequently conducted on scalar metrics extracted from anatomically homologous regions, like maximum von Mises stresses from demarcated bone areas. The advantages of this approach are numerical tabulability and statistical simplicity, but disadvantages include region demarcation subjectivity, spatial resolution reduction, and results interpretation complexity when attempting to mentally map tabulated results to original anatomy. This study proposes a method which abandons the two aforementioned advantages to overcome these three limitations. The method is inspired by parametric random field theory (RFT), but instead uses a non-parametric analogue to RFT which permits flexible model-wide statistical analyses through non-parametrically constructed probability densities regarding volumetric upcrossing geometry. We illustrate method fundamentals using basic 1D and 2D models, then use a public model of hip cartilage compression to highlight how the concepts can extend to practical biomechanical modeling. The ultimate whole-volume results are easy to interpret, and for constant model geometry the method is simple to implement. Moreover, our analyses demonstrate that the method can yield biomechanical insights which are difficult to infer from single simulations or tabulated multi-simulation results. Generalizability to non-constant geometry including subject-specific anatomy is discussed.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.7717/peerj-cs.96
PEERJ COMPUTER SCIENCE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Computational statistics,Finite element analysis,Biomechanics,Probabilistic simulation,Random field theory
Random field,Biology,Scalar (physics),Finite element method,Parametric statistics,Computational statistics,Probabilistic logic,Geometry,von Mises yield criterion,Statistical hypothesis testing
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
2
2376-5992
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Todd C Pataky162.41
Michihiko Koseki2264.77
Phillip G. Cox300.34