School screening for scoliosis: can surface topography replace examination with scoliometer?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Clinical examination with the use of scoliometer is a basic method for scoliosis detection in school screening programs. Surface topography (ST) enables three-dimensional back assessment, however it has not been adopted for the purpose of scoliosis screening yet. The purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness of ST for scoliosis screening.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>996 girls aged 9 to 13 years were examined, with both scoliometer and surface topography. The Surface Trunk Rotation (STR) was introduced and defined as a parameter allowing comparison with scoliometer Angle of Trunk Rotation taken as reference.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Intra-observer error for STR parameter was 1.9°, inter-observer error was 0.8°. Sensitivity and specificity of ST were not satisfactory, the screening cut-off value of the surface topography parameter could not be established.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The study did not reveal advantage of ST as a scoliosis screening method in comparison to clinical examination with the use of the scoliometer.</p

Calibration and Validation of an Experimental Setup for the Measurement of the Cylindrical Body Shapes and Curvatures of the Objects and Subjects through the Techniques of Rasterstereography

The intent of study is to establish a criterion for the experimental setup of rasterstereography, one that is more efficient, simple, accurate and precise to examine and analyse the curvature of the object or the subject. Firstly, the setup is needed to be calibrated and for this purpose we considered a reference plane, eleven cylinders of different diameter ranging from 30-119mm were used for calibration of curvature maps of cylinders and cylindrical objects through the regression line. Further this model was tested on subjects and for that we reckoned cylindrical body parts of boys and a total of 30 college students were involved as subjects in this process. The body parts to be measured had curvature like cylinders of different diameters ranging from 42-120mm. The distortion of raster grid was observed, quantified and recorded with the help of different tools and results were established. The regression line was obtained between the measured (x) and computed (y). The standard error of the cylindrical object was 0.04 and that of cylindrical body parts of subjects was 0.0407. This technique was validated through the coefficient of correlation for objects and subjects which was found to be 0.99982 and 0.999141 respectively. Accuracy and Precision were also calculated for this model, which were 99.60% accurate and 99.49% precise. Curvature maps were found more than 99%. This technique is inexpensive, reliable, reproducible and may be installed easily in hospitals to examine appraise body shape, composition and deformities of young men