ultrasound imaging of spinal vertebrae to study scoliosis超声成像的脊柱研究脊柱侧凸.pdf

Open Journal of Acoustics, 2012, 2, 95-103 /10.4236/oja.2012.23011 Published Online September 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/oja) Ultrasound Imaging of Spinal Vertebrae to Study Scoliosis 1 2 3* Wei Chen , Lawrence H. Le , Edmond H. M. Lou 1Departmentof Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 2Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 3Department of Surgery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada * Email: wei.chen@ualberta.ca, lawrence.le@ualberta.ca, elou@ualberta.ca Received July 21, 2012; revised August 19, 2012; accepted August 28, 2012 ABSTRACT Scoliosis is a musculoskeletal disorder manifested as a three-dimensional spinal deformity. It affects 2% - 3% of the adolescent population. The conventional method to diagnose scoliosis is to measure the Cobb angle from posteroante- rior radiograph. Since radiation exposure is not desirable for patients, other non-ionizing methods have been explored. Among all the non-ionization methods, ultrasound (US) is a potential cost-effective method. However, our understand- ing of US interaction with the vertebrae or the spine is limited. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the ability of US to identify bony landmarks for measuring spinal deformity. This study used a phased array US system with a 5 MHz transducer and a position encoder. In-vitro experiment on a cadaver vertebra and a pilot clinical study were carried out. The in-vitro experimental results showed that the lamina and spinous process were strong reflectors from the single verte