Simulation of Fracture Healing by Using Cellular Automata.

In this paper, the fracture healing is simulated by using the cellular automata (CA) method. It is assumed that each cell has a property of bone, cartilage or fibrous connective tissue. Nine local rules are adopted to change the property of each cell against the mechanical stimulus, which is the strain energy density, and the existence of bone in the surroundings. As the simulation model, two dimensional sheep metatarsal model is considered and the fracture healing is simulated. The simulation results agree well with the ones by using fuzzy logic model and experimental data. It is shown that the CA method is one of the simulation method to express the fracture healing.