Almouahed Shaban, a PhD student in the Image and information processing department and  Latim laboratory, defended his thesis 1 June 2011 at Télécom Bretagne (Brest).

Abstract: The accurate measurement of the tibia-femoral stress distribution on the tibial component of a knee implant is crucial for early diagnosis of the most frequent postoperative complications more frequent. These complications resulting from various surgical and non-surgical factors can shorten the life of the implant and thus lead to further surgery. The main objective of this thesis is to propose, design, develop and test the first version of the prototype of the independent and predictive  knee implant. This implant is the same size as any conventional alternative and can accurately measure the distribution of effort while walking. The tibial base plate of this implant was designed to accommodate four piezoelectric elements so that they can be used simultaneously as sensors of the distribution of effort and generators of electric energy. First, an electromechanical model of the piezoelectric element has been developed to determine theoretically the amount of electrical energy that can be generated in conditions of change reasonably similar to those encountered in vivo when walking. Next, and before making an experimental prototype for laboratory tests, a computer-aided design and finite element modeling of the tibial implant were developed to study the effectiveness of the proposed approach to assess the surgical factors leading to premature failure of the implant. Finally, experimental tests were conducted on the prototype to validate the theoretical modeling. In conclusion, the experimental results were in reasonable agreement with the theoretical results.