Development and application of a non invasive image matching method to study spine biomechanics

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008. === Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-92). === Research on spine biomechanics is critical to understand pathology such as degenerative changes and low back pain. However, current study on in-vivo sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wang, Shaobai
Other Authors: Guoan Li.
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44851
Description
Summary:Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008. === Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-92). === Research on spine biomechanics is critical to understand pathology such as degenerative changes and low back pain. However, current study on in-vivo spine biomechanics is limited by the complex anatomy and invasive methodology. Modem clinical imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance and fluoroscope images, which are widely accessible nowadays, have the potential to study in-vivo spine biomechanics accurately and non-invasively. This research presents a new combined magnetic resonance and fluoroscope imaging matching method to study human lumbar vertebral kinematics and disc deformation during various physiologic functional activities. Validation and application of this method as well as discussion of its performance and applicability are detailed herein. === by Shaobai Wang. === S.M.