Automatic spinal deformity detection based on neural network

Abstract

We propose a technique for automatic spinal deformity detection method from moiré topographic images. Normally the moiré stripes show a symmetric pattern, as a human body is almost symmetric. According to the progress of the deformity of a spine, asymmetry becomes larger. Numerical representation of the degree of asymmetry is therefore useful in evaluating the deformity. Displacement of local centroids is evaluated statistically between the left-hand side and the right-hand side regions of the moiré images with respect to the extracted middle line. The degree of the displacement learned by a neural network employing the back propagation algorithm. An experiment was performed employing 1,200 real moiré images (600 normal and 600 abnormal) and 89% of the images were classified correctly by the NN. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.