SpinalTracking: An Application to Help Track Spinal Deformities

The human vertebral column (HVC) comprises specialized tissues and structures that allow it to support body weight with an extensive range of movement and protect the spinal cord, which is essential for routine activities. HVC deformities are highly prevalent in individuals over 65, affecting between 32% and 68% of this population, and represent a public health problem with a profound impact on society. Physicians evaluate and monitor HVC deformities in practice by physical examination and analyzing imaging tests. In this context, the SpinalTracking App was developed to enable specialists to manually or automatically measure the Cobb angle in X-ray images of the spine of patients with scoliosis, using image processing and deep learning techniques. The measurements provided by the app are stored so that treatment can be monitored. The application obtained a Pearson correlation of 0.94 and 0.92 for the calculation made with the manual measurement functionalities and an average correlation of 0.74 for the automatic calculation. This demonstrated the potential use of SpinalTracking as a tool for measuring and controlling the evolution of each patient’s scoliosis deviation.