Geometrical Comparison between Chinese and European-American Cervical Vertebrae

摘要

Neck finite element models have been extensively applied to design and validate the artificial biomaterials. To date, many finite element models of European-American neck have been proposed. However, the issue that using the geometrical scaling to convert a western model into a Chinese neck model is highly controversial. A Chinese neck model, based on MRI/CT scan images and frozen slice images from a 35-year old male cadaver, was established in this paper to examine the geometrical difference between Chinese and European-American cervical vertebrae. Results showed that at every level of all cervical vertebrae except C2, a significant difference between the geometrical model of the Chinese and European-American cervical vertebrae was revealed. The authors suggested that there might be a significant difference between the Chinese and European-American cervical vertebrae.