Congratulations to Dr Hamed Ziaei Poor, the MDRI’s most recent PhD graduate who graduated during a ceremony in Adelaide yesterday (17 December 2019).

Hamed’s thesis is titled ‘Calculation of Femoral Strain During Normal Activities Using Efficient Computational Methods’ and was under the supervision of Prof Mark Taylor and Dr. Saulo Martelli.

Below is a summary of Hamed’s research:

Efficient calculation of femoral strain is important for various biomechanical applications, such as predicting femoral strains over multiple physical activities; improving the design of implantable devices; and assessing the risk of femoral fracture. Over the past 40 years, the finite-element method (FEM) has been used extensively for the calculation of femoral strain. However, generating and solving the models using common image-based procedures make it practically impossible, particularly for large studies of bone which need to run the thousands of simulations to explore the interdependence between femur anatomy, bone quality, strain, and motor task using lots of point data, meaning that FE models are extensively large and computationally too expensive to run, limiting to use this method for clinical applications.

Dr Hamed Ziaei Poor explored the use of a number of novel computational methods which significantly reduced the time required to determine the strains in a human femur, from approximately 1 hour to just a few minutes. In particular, a method called ‘SPM2’ was developed that is capable of determining the strains in any femur performing any activity of daily living, thus allowing population-based studies of intact and implanted bones. The rapid solution times now has the potential for these computational models to be integrated into clinical workflows and enhance the information provided to clinicians.