Medscape reported on digital twin (DT) technology, highlighting its usage at HSS and featuring insight from Andrew D. Pearle, MD, sports medicine surgeon at HSS. 

A DT platform is, essentially, a virtual replica of a patient’s anatomy, created by software. DT helps to eliminate trial-and-error because physicians can monitor a patient’s “twin” in real time, then experiment with treatment strategies without traditional safety risks.

At HSS, the multidisciplinary team working on the DT project consists of surgeons, radiologists, biomechanical engineers, and artificial intelligence and data specialists. Using the DT tool, they’ll focus initially on the knee. 3D imaging will be used to create a patient’s anatomic replica and then treat musculoskeletal injuries. Surgeons can then run simulations driven by data in real time to plan surgery, make decisions intraoperatively, and predict how well a patient will do, which in turn will allow patients to better understand their conditions. 

“In our pipeline, we take an MRI of the knee and autosegment it to create a 3D model,” said Dr. Pearle. “You can integrate this 3D MRI data with a physics-based computational model, essentially adding virtual ligaments to the knee to simulate how it will behave in the real world. We can also tune ligaments — make them tighter or looser — based on the injury pattern.”

Read the full article at medscape.com.