BeST-Graft viewer, a new system to improve the bone allograft–recipient matching process

Tissue establishments are responsible for processing, testing, preserving, storing, and distributing allografts from donors to be transplanted into recipients. In some situations, a matching process is required to determine the allograft that best fits the recipient. Allograft morphology is a key consideration for the matching process. The manual procedures applied to obtain these parameters make the process error-prone. A new system to manage bone allograft-recipient matching for tissue establishments is proposed. The system requires bone allografts to be digitalized and the resulting images to be stored in a DICOM file. The system provides functionalities to: (i) manage DICOM files (registered in the PACs) from both allografts and recipients; (ii) reconstruct 3D models from DICOM images; (iii) explore 3D models using 2D, 3D, and multiplanar reconstructions; (iv) take allograft and recipient measurements; and (v) visualize and interact with recipient and allograft data simultaneously. The system has been installed in the Barcelona Tissue Bank (Banc de Sang i Teixits), which has digitalized the bone allografts to test the system. A use case with a femur is presented to test all the viewer functionalities. In addition, the recipient-allograft workflow is evaluated to show the steps of the procedure where the viewer can be used. The bone allograft-recipient matching procedure can be optimized using software tools with functionalities to visualize, interact, and take measurements.