DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM FOR HUMAN SPINE DEFORMITY MEASUREMENT

Abstract

Medical robotics and screening techniques have been applied to a variety of areas and have great potential to clinical applications. Scoliosis is an unnatural curvature or deformity of the spine with lateral deviation from the normally vertical outline. The traditional evaluation method for scoliosis of X-ray examination with the Cobb angle index suffers the disadvantages of ionizing radiation and doctor¿s subjectivity. This thesis develops an innovative and integrative system consisting of robotic platform, which is a parallel kinematic manipulator, special-designed apparatus and stereo vision camera system. With this system, a subject¿s bending postures are controlled accurately in a series of pre-defined angles. Three-dimensional images of the subject¿s back are captured and analyzed quantitatively to determine the presence and severity of scoliosis. With the original-developed evaluation index, IVAS and MIVAS, this research helps doctors to treat individual patients with inherent secure, radiation-free, and efficient system for spinal deformity measurement.