Hospital for Special Surgery reveals 3D surface topographic scan for scoliosis patients
pharmafile | March 8, 2023 | News story | Medical Communications |
Researchers at New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) have found that using a 30-camera array, or 3dMD, can give spinal surgeons an accurate assessment of range-of-motion in the torso for adolescents with scoliosis ‒ information which can help guide management of the condition.
Spine specialists at HSS have been using the camera, which can produce a full body scan in under two milliseconds, for years, but researchers have only now published the results. The speed of the camera eliminates blurring from even the slightest potential movement.
As 3dMD does not use ionising radiation, the technology helps limit the number of x-rays adolescents with scoliosis are exposed to throughout their care. X-rays are expensive and long-term exposure, such as with scoliosis patients, can be linked to the development of cancers.
Information from the 3dMD scans inform spinal surgeons about the optimal approach to operative treatments and allows them to track the progress of patients after surgery.
“Determining spinal range of motion is a lot more difficult than it sounds…[the 3dMD provides a] safe, repeatable, inexpensive measurement of spinal range of motion that can be used in both a research and clinical setting,” said Roger Widmann, MD, chief of the Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery Service at HSS and co-principal investigator on the new study.
“This is teaching us which parameters are more useful and which are not…And now we have this system that acquires these variables and doesn’t require ionising radiation to do so,” commented Howard Hillstrom, PhD, a biomechanical engineer at HSS, senior director of the Leon Root, MD Motion Analysis Laboratory and co-principal investigator on this project.
James Spargo
