Abstract
Spinal ligaments are crucial elements in the complex biomechanical simulation models as they transfer forces on the bony structure, guide and limit movements and stabilize the spine. The spinal ligaments encompass seven major groups being responsible for maintaining functional interrelationships among the other spinal components. Determination of the ligament origin and insertion points on the 3D vertebrae models is an essential step in building accurate and complex spine biomechanical models. In our paper, we propose a pipeline that is able to detect 66 spinal ligament attachment points by using a step-wise approach. Our method incorporates a fast vertebra registration that strategically extracts only 15 3D points to compute the transformation, and edge detection for a precise projection of the registered ligaments onto any given patient-specific vertebra model. Our method shows high accuracy, particularly in identifying landmarks on the anterior part of the vertebra with an average distance of 2.24 mm for anterior longitudinal ligament and 1.26 mm for posterior longitudinal ligament landmarks. The landmark detection requires approximately 3.0 seconds per vertebra, providing a substantial improvement over existing methods. Clinical relevance: using the proposed method, the required landmarks that represent origin and insertion points for forces in the biomechanical spine models can be localized automatically in an accurate and time-efficient manner.
Abstract (translated)
脊柱韧带是复杂生物力学模拟模型中的关键元素，因为它们传递骨骼结构上的力、引导和限制运动并稳定脊柱。脊柱韧带包括七个主要组群，负责维持与其他脊柱组件的功能性相互关系。确定3D椎骨模型上韧带的起点和止点是一个构建准确且复杂的脊柱生物力学模型的关键步骤。在我们的论文中，我们提出了一种能够通过逐步方法检测出66个脊柱韧带附着点的流水线。我们的方法结合了快速椎体配准，该配准策略性地仅提取15个3D点来计算变换，并使用边缘检测技术以精确投影注册后的韧带到任何给定的患者特异性椎骨模型上。我们的方法显示出高精度，特别是在识别椎骨前部标志点方面，平均距离为2.24毫米（对于前纵韧带）和1.26毫米（对于后纵韧带）。每个椎体的地标检测大约需要3.0秒，与现有方法相比提供了显著改进。临床相关性：使用我们提出的方法可以自动、准确且高效地定位代表生物力学脊柱模型中力的作用起点和止点所需的地标。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05081
