Cooper R, Cardan C, Allen R
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK.
Comput Biol Med. 2001 Nov;31(6):451-69. doi: 10.1016/s0010-4825(01)00016-6.
Disorders of the spine which lead to back pain are often mechanical in origin and, despite extensive research, diagnosis of the underlying cause remains problematical, yet back pain is one of the most common rheumatological symptoms presented to the general practitioner. Diagnosis must frequently be based upon evidence gathered at the segmental level which invariably means that imaging is used in the process. In addition, surgical fixation is increasingly used when the spinal column is considered to exhibit instability. A solid model of the spine creates the possibility of visualising spine motion, of assessing the effects of loading of the spinal column in conjunction with finite element analysis to investigate the consequences of vertebral fusion, and of planning surgical intervention. Such a model could also be valuable in medical education and for demonstrating spine motion to a patient to highlight abnormalities or the effects of treatment. This paper describes a three-dimensional visualisation of the human lumbar spine which runs on a personal computer operating under the Windows environment. The user interface enables the clinician to select the viewpoint for the spine model to allow the motion to be studied from different angles. Motion data are currently acquired from fluoroscopic image sequences but the model could be used to display data from different imaging modalities when they are developed sufficiently for spine motion studies.
导致背痛的脊柱疾病通常源于机械性问题，尽管进行了广泛研究，但对潜在病因的诊断仍然存在问题，然而背痛却是全科医生接诊的最常见的风湿病症状之一。诊断常常必须基于在节段水平收集的证据，这必然意味着在诊断过程中要使用影像学检查。此外，当认为脊柱表现出不稳定时，手术固定的应用越来越多。一个坚实的脊柱模型能够实现对脊柱运动的可视化，结合有限元分析评估脊柱负荷的影响以研究椎体融合的后果，以及规划手术干预。这样的模型在医学教育中以及向患者展示脊柱运动以突出异常情况或治疗效果方面也可能具有价值。本文描述了一种在Windows环境下运行的个人计算机上的人体腰椎三维可视化模型。用户界面使临床医生能够为脊柱模型选择视角，以便从不同角度研究运动。目前运动数据是从荧光透视图像序列中获取的，但当不同成像方式在脊柱运动研究方面发展得足够完善时，该模型可用于显示来自这些成像方式的数据。
