A preoperative spinal stiffness test for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis
A precise understanding of the biomechanics of the spine is essential for planning the surgical correction of scoliosis and for understanding degenerative spine disorders.
Current clinical tests of preoperative spinal biomechanics do not accurately measure true mechanical stiffness because they assess spinal displacement without considering the force required to deform the spine. To address this limitation, we introduce a noninvasive, preoperative method for quantifying three-dimensional, patient-specific stiffness of the spines in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis patients. Our approach utilizes a spinal suspension test designed to simultaneously track both the force applied on the spine and the resulting vertebral displacements. This system exerts a force equivalent to 30% of the patient’s body weight, while orthogonal X-rays capture the positions of the vertebrae under load. The suspension test is designed for use in a low dose EOS imaging system and can be combined with numerical modeling techniques to provide a comprehensive biomechanical assessment of patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.
