A Wireless Visualized Sensing System with Prosthesis Pose Reconstruction for Total Knee Arthroplasty.

The surgery quality of the total knee arthroplasty (TKA) depends on how accurate the knee prosthesis is implanted. The knee prosthesis is composed of the femoral component, the plastic spacer and the tibia component. The instant and kinetic relative pose of the knee prosthesis is one key aspect for the surgery quality evaluation. In this work, a wireless visualized sensing system with the instant and kinetic prosthesis pose reconstruction has been proposed and implemented. The system consists of a multimodal sensing device, a wireless data receiver and a data processing workstation. The sensing device has the identical shape and size as the spacer. During the surgery, the sensing device temporarily replaces the spacer and captures the images and the contact force distribution inside the knee joint prosthesis. It is connected to the external data receiver wirelessly through a 432 MHz data link, and the data is then sent to the workstation for processing. The signal processing method to analyze the instant and kinetic prosthesis pose from the image data has been investigated. Experiments on the prototype system show that the absolute reconstruction errors of the flexion-extension rotation angle (the pitch rotation of the femoral component around the horizontal long axis of the spacer), the internal-external rotation (the yaw rotation of the femoral component around the spacer vertical axis) and the mediolateral translation displacement between the centers of the femoral component and the spacer based on the image data are less than 1.73°, 1.08° and 1.55 mm, respectively. It provides a force balance measurement with error less than ±5 N. The experiments also show that kinetic pose reconstruction can be used to detect the surgery defection that cannot be detected by the force measurement or instant pose reconstruction.

A systematic review and meta-analysis on the effectiveness of bivalent mRNA booster vaccines against Omicron variants.

BACKGROUND: A global shift to bivalent mRNA vaccines is ongoing to counterbalance the diminishing effectiveness of the original monovalent vaccines due to the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants, yet substantial variation in the bivalent vaccine effectiveness (VE) exists across studies and a complete picture is lacking. METHODS: We searched papers evaluating absolute or relative effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 BA.1 type or BA.4/5 type bivalent mRNA vaccines on eight publication databases published from September 1st, 2022, to November 8th, 2023. Pooled VE against Omicron-associated infection and severe events (hospitalization and/or death) was estimated in reference to unvaccinated, ≥2 original monovalent doses, and ≥ 3 original monovalent doses. RESULTS: From 630 citations identified, 28 studies were included, involving 55,393,303 individuals. Bivalent boosters demonstrated higher effectiveness against symptomatic or any infection for all ages combined, with an absolute VE of 53.5 % (95 % CI: -22.2-82.3 %) when compared to unvaccinated and relative VE of 30.8 % (95 % CI: 22.5-38.2 %) and 28.4 % (95 % CI: 10.2-42.9 %) when compared to ≥ 2 and ≥ 3 original monovalent doses, respectively. The corresponding VE estimates for adults ≥ 60 years old were 22.5 % (95 % CI: 16.8-39.8 %), 31.4 % (95 % CI: 27.7-35.0 %), and 30.6 % (95 % CI: -13.2-57.5 %). Pooled bivalent VE estimates against severe events were higher, 72.9 % (95 % CI: 60.5-82.4 %), 57.6 % (95 % CI: 42.4-68.8 %), and 62.1 % (95 % CI: 54.6-68.3 %) for all ages, and 72.0 % (95 % CI: 51.4-83.9 %), 63.4 % (95 % CI: 41.0-77.3 %), and 60.7 % (95 % CI: 52.4-67.6 %) for adults ≥ 60 years old, compared to unvaccinated, ≥2 original monovalent doses, and ≥ 3 original monovalent doses, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The bivalent boosters demonstrated superior protection against severe outcomes than the original monovalent boosters across age groups, highlighting the critical need for improving vaccine coverage, especially among the vulnerable older subpopulation.