Semi-automatic Method for Intervertebral Kinematics Measurement in the Cervical Spine

摘要

Cervical spine injuries, such as whiplash or disk herniation, are a worldwide health problem. Digital videofluoroscopic is often used to examine spine movement by means of manual identification and marking of vertebral landmarks, which is a complicated and time-consuming process. The aim of our study was to develop a fast, semi-automatic cervical vertebrae tracking method to accurately calculate the inter vertebral rotation in C1-C7 vertebrae. We manually defined templates for each cervical vertebra, so that these templates would be automatically tracked throughout neck movement. Subjects performed extension and flexion in the sagittal plane, which was recorded with digital videofluo-roscopy. We implemented cross-correlation and Kalman filters for template tracking, and validated our method by comparing our results with a manual method, where a trained clinician manually marked the vertebrae. Our method provided higher intraobserver repeatability for C2/C3 to C6/C7 segments. Accordingly, the intraobserver repeatability was also comparable to other methods developed to track the lumbar vertebrae.