The basic stress pathway above the acetabular dome is important for the maintenance of implant stability in acetabular reconstruction of total hip arthroplasty (THA). The purpose of this study was to describe the basic stress pathway to provide evidence for clinical acetabular reconstruction guidance of THA. A subject-specific finite element (FE) model was developed from CT data to generate 3 normal hip models and a convergence study was conducted to determine the number of pelvic trabecular bone material properties using 5 material assignment plans. In addition, in the range of 0 to 20 mm above the acetabular dome, the models were sectioned and the stress pathway was defined as two parts, i.e. 3D trabecular bone stress distribution and quantified cortical bone stress level. The results showed that using 100 materials to define the material property of pelvic trabecular bone could assure both the accuracy and efficiency of the FE model. Under the same body weight condition, the 3D trabecular bone stress distributions above the acetabular dome were consistent, and especially the quantified cortical bone stress levels were all above 20 MPa and showed no statistically significant difference (P>0.05). Therefore, defining the basic stress pathway above the acetabular dome under certain body weight condition contributes to design accurate preoperative plan for acetabular reconstruction, thus helping restore the normal hip biomechanics and preserve the stability of the implants.