Fast 3D reconstruction of the spine from biplanar radiographs using a deformable articulated model

This paper proposes a novel method for fast 3D reconstructions of the scoliotic spine from two planar radiographs. The method uses a statistical model of the shape of the spine for computing the 3D reconstruction that best matches the user input (about 7 control points per radiograph). In addition, the spine was modelled as an articulated structure to take advantage of the dependencies between adjacent vertebrae in terms of location, orientation and shape.The accuracy of the method was assessed for a total of 30 patients with mild to severe scoliosis (Cobb angle [22°, 70°]) by comparison with a previous validated method. Reconstruction time was 90 s for mild patients, and 110 s for severe. Results show an accuracy of ∼0.5 mm locating vertebrae, while orientation accuracy was up to 1.5° for all except axial rotation (3.3° on moderate and 4.4° on severe cases). Clinical indices presented no significant differences to the reference method (Wilcoxon test, p ≤ 0.05) on patients with moderate scoliosis. Significant differences were found for two of the five indices (p = 0.03) on the severe cases, while errors remain within the inter-observer variability of the reference method.Comparison with state-of-the-art methods shows that the method proposed here generally achieves superior accuracy while requiring less reconstruction time, making it especially appealing for clinical routine use.