Upcoming Event: Oden Institute Seminar

Challenges of Patient-Specific Pelvis Implant Design Due to Pelvic Sarcoma

Prof. Ed Akin, Rice University, Houston, TX

Abstract

Pelvic sarcoma often affects relatively young people. The treatment for pelvic sarcoma can involve complete resection of the tumor with a margin of surrounding bone, and results in a sizable bone defect in the pelvis.  Some treatments include a patient-specific implant in hopes of significantly restoring functionality. Documentation of such implants reveals a mechanical failure rate of about 20% within two years post-surgery.

In combination with Dr. Valerae Lewis MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center the Rice University Implant Design Team, headed by B.J. Fregly, Professor of Mechanical Engineering received a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas award to develop timely and reliable procedures and manufacturing processes for providing patient-specific implants for persons with pelvic sarcoma.

After four years of effort this seminar will survey the processes implemented, the results to date, and questions about future research.  As a guest of Professor Tom Hughes, during this (last) sabbatical at the Oden Institute I will evaluate different and/or faster approaches to these problems.  I encourage others to consider this and similar computational science contributions to society as worthy of research in the spirit of the Oden institute. A list of the Team’s related publications is available.   

Biography

Ed Akin received his BS civil engineering and MS engineering mechanics from Tennessee Tech and went on obtain his PhD in engineering mechanics from Virginia Tech in 1968.  Thereafter, he joined the faculty of the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  In 1983 Ed joined Rice University as Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics.

Ed has published numerous journal articles and eight books including ‘Computer Aided Mechanical Design’, ‘Object Oriented Programming via Fortran 90’, and ‘Finite Element Analysis with Error Estimators’.  

He has spent sabbatical visits with Professor John Whiteman (Brunel), Professor Tom Hughes (Caltech) and Prof. Tinsley Oden (UT Austin, 1978).  He spent a few more sabbaticals with Tinsley, and worked in his company for a while.  In this his last sabbatical, as a guest of Professor Tom Hughes, Ed hopes to learn of better ways to attack the subject of today’s seminar.

Ed and his wife Tracy teach classes in country western dancing as their hobby.