Defining the medial-lateral axis of an anatomical femur coordinate system using freehand 3D ultrasound imaging

•We defined an anatomical coordinate system for the femur using freehand 3D ultrasound imaging.•We compared several methods to determine the femur coordinate system used in gait analysis.•Offsets in determining the medial-lateral axis of femur result in hip rotation offsets.

Hip rotation from gait analysis informs clinical decisions regarding correction of femoral torsional deformities. However, it is among the least repeatable due to discrepancies in determining the medial-lateral axis of the femur. Conventional or functional calibration methods may be used to define the axis but there is no benchmark to evaluate these methods. Freehand 3D ultrasound, the coupling of ultrasound with 3D motion capture, may provide such a benchmark.We measured the accuracy in vitro and repeatability in vivo of determining the femur condylar axis from freehand 3D ultrasound. The condylar axis provided the reference medial-lateral axis of the femur and was used to evaluate one conventional method and three functional calibration methods, applied to three calibration movements. Ten healthy subjects (20 limbs) underwent 3D gait analysis and freehand 3D ultrasound. The functional calibration methods were a transformation technique, a geometrical method and a method that minimises variance of knee varus-valgus kinematics (DynaKAD). The conventional method used markers over the femoral epicondyles.The condylar axis determined by 3D ultrasound showed good accuracy in vitro, 1.6° (SD: 0.3°) and good repeatability in vivo, 0.2° (RSMD: 2.3°). The DynaKAD method applied to the walking calibration movement determined the medial-lateral axis closest to the ultrasound reference. The average angular difference in the transverse plane was 3.1° (SD: 6.1°).Freehand 3D ultrasound offers an accurate, non-invasive and relatively fast method to locate the medial-lateral axis of the femur for gait analysis.