Title: Spinal curvature for the assessment of spinal stability

Authors: Senay Mihcin

Addresses: Institute of Medical Imaging and Technology, School of Medicine, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

Abstract: Posture is one of the most important factors in spinal stability. To investigate the spinal instability, a tool was developed using the Thrustline theory. A pilot postural data pool was formed from a sample population of 40 healthy males and females for this computational model by using a device called Spinal Mouse® (SM) to record the relative positions of the vertebral bodies firstly. Then, the 2D coordinates of the vertebral bodies were calculated by an in-house developed code. Student's t-tests showed significance of difference between the postures was mostly higher for X coordinates with p-value of <0.01 and with p-value of <0.05 for Y coordinates. The postural differences between the genders indicated that a pilot database is required while developing a tool for assessing the spinal stability for each gender. Flow chart demonstrated the feasibility of the application. For clinical applications, combination of the developed software with electromyography (EMG) was recommended.

Keywords: spinal stability; thrustline theory; spinal curvature; Spinal Mouse; lifting; gender; injury biomechanics; computational modelling; injury prevention; injury mechanism; posture; vertebrae; postural differences; electromyography; EMG.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2016.075425

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2016 Vol.20 No.3, pp.226 - 242

Received: 21 May 2015
Accepted: 06 Sep 2015

Published online: 22 Mar 2016 *

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