F. Cheriet, D. Jiang, and N.F. Stewart
Biomedical modelling, simulation, scoliosis, thin-plate splines
Recent technological innovations have had a large impact in the field of medicine, and it would be desirable, for example, in cardiology, neurology and orthopaedics, to simulate treatment using a numerical model personalized for the individual patient before proceeding to actual treatment. Moreover, as the choice of medical treatment often depends more on the rate of progression than on the severity of an anomaly at any particular instant, there is a need for simulation tools that permit observation of the evolution of morphological or functional anomalies. The purpose of the work described here is to study a simulation tool that would permit the clinician to document progression of skeletal deformation in adolescents afflicted with scoliosis, to choose the most appropriate treatment. More particularly, the objective is to provide the mathematical formulation of a model for the deformation of the collection of structures forming the human trunk, so that, as a first step, one could monitor the progression of the deformity while using fewer X-rays. The models are based on thin-plate splines, and have undergone preliminary evaluation using data for real scoliotic patients. The results obtained show that the proposed model should adequately approximate the progression of scoliotic deformities, given observations on the external trunk.
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