scholarly journals Spinal Coronal and Sagittal Balance in 584 Healthy Individuals During Growth: Normal Plumb Line Values and Their Correlation With Radiographic Measurements

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (12) ◽  
pp. 1712-1718
Author(s):  
Alessandra Negrini ◽  
Massimiliano Vanossi ◽  
Sabrina Donzelli ◽  
Fabio Zaina ◽  
Michele Romano ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Plumb line distances (PDs) are widely used in conservative clinical practice to evaluate the sagittal shape of the spine. Objective The objective was to assess the normative values of PDs in a large, healthy population in an age range representative of the adolescent population with spinal deformities, and to correlate it with x-ray measurements. Design This was a cross-sectional study. Methods Participants were 584 healthy individuals (341 females) with x-rays showing no spine deformities. The whole sample (OVERALL) was divided into 5 groups: 6 to 9 years old (n = 106); >10 years, Risser 0 with triradiate cartilage open (n = 129) or closed (n = 104); Risser 1 to 2 (n = 126); and Risser 3 to 5 (n = 119). PDs were taken by maintaining a tangent to the thoracic kyphosis apex at C7, T12, L3, and S2. Sagittal index (C7 + L3), and sagittal and coronal balances (C7 related to S2) were calculated. Results In OVERALL, PDs at C7, T12, L3, and S2 were 39.9 ± 16.7, 21.4 ± 15.3, 39.9 ± 15, 20.6 ± 17.0 mm, respectively. Sagittal index was 79.8 ± 26.8, sagittal balance was 19.3 ± 17 mm anterior to S2 plumb line; 13.5% had a coronal imbalance of 11.4 ± 5.4 mm to the right and 24.7% of 13.2 ± 6.0 mm to the left. C7 and L3 PDs, sagittal index, and sagittal balance were significantly lower in ages 6 to 9 compared to older patients in Risser 1 to 2 group. C7 and S2 PDs and sagittal index were significantly larger in males. Sagittal index correlated with thoracic kyphosis Cobb degrees (r = 0.47). Limitations The participants were not randomly chosen from the general population; and they had an x-ray because of spine pathology suspicion. Conclusions This study shows normative data to be used in clinical practice. Sagittal spinopelvic alignment has gained more and more importance in the last decades because of its high correlation to Health-Related Quality of Life scores in adults. 1

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Paiva Ribeiro ◽  
Bárbara Vendramini Marchetti ◽  
Eduardo Bojunga de Oliveira ◽  
Claúdia Tarragô Candotti

Abstract Objectives: to assess the concurrent validity of kyphosis index measured in the flexicurve from the correlation of X-rays exams, identifying its accuracy and to assess the thoracic spine in children and young people. Methods: 31 young people at an average age of 11.1±3.4 years were evaluated by digital x-rays: (1) Cobb angle (ÂngCobb), (2) Kyphosis index (KIX), and (3) KIX angle (ÂngKIX). These were measured from the flexicurve design on the millimetric graph paper: (1) Kyphosis index (KIFint), obtained from C7 the intersection of kyphosis-lordosis, (2) Kyphosis index (KIFT12), obtained between C7 and T12, and (3) Kyphosis angle (ÂngKIFint and ÂngKIFT12). Statistical analysis: Correlation to Pearson Moment-Product and t test (α<0.05). Results: the angular values (ÂngKIFint, ÂngKIFT12, ÂngKIX) were underestimated in relation to Cobb angle (p<0.05), correlating only to KIX angle and Cobb angle [r=0.698, p<0.001]. The linear values (KIFint, KIFT12, KIX) were similar ( p>0.05) among themselves, correlating only to KIX and Cobb angle [r=0.698, p<0.001] and KIX angle and KIX [r=1; p<0.001]. Conclusions: the KIX and KIX angle presented as an accurate method and valid to be used in the thoracic kyphosis assessment, although KIFint, KIFT12, KIFint angle and KIFT12 angle showed no correlation to the gold standard and not being indicated to assess the thoracic kyphosis in children and young people.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Scheeren de Oliveira ◽  
Cláudia Tarragô Candotti ◽  
Marcelo La Torre ◽  
Patricia Paula Tonin Pelinson ◽  
Tássia Silveira Furlanetto ◽  
...  

Objective. to verify the validity and reproducibility of using the flexicurve to measure the angles of the thoracic and lumbar curvatures.Method. 47 subjects were evaluated by: (1) palpation and marking of the spinous processes using lead markers, (2) using X-rays in the sagittal plane to measure the Cobb angles, (3) molding the flexicurve to the spine, and (4) drawing the contour of the flexicurve onto graph paper. The angle of curvature was determined with the flexicurve based on a 3rd order polynomial.Results. No differences were found between the Cobb angles and the angles obtained using the flexicurve in thoracic and lumbar curvatures (). Correlations were strong and significant for the thoracic (, ) and lumbar (, ) curvatures. Excellent and significant correlations were found for both the intraevaluator and interevaluator measurements.Conclusion. The results show that there is no significant difference between the values obtained using the flexicurve and those obtained using the X-ray procedure and that there is a strong correlation between the two methods. This, together with the excellent level of inter- and intraevaluator reproducibility justifies its recommendation for use in clinical practice.


2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
Rade Babic ◽  
Ankica Jelenkovic ◽  
Stankovic Babic ◽  
Strahinja Babic

Introduction. Shortly after the discovery of X-rays, their practical application in the clinical practice became the object of interest of many non-medical individuals. One of them was the famous Serbian writer, Branislav Nusic. This paper presents the life and work of Branislav Nusic, as well as his article: ?Roentgen?s Photography? which was published in the journal ?Politics? (July 8, 1906; N? 892, p. 3), under the alias Ben Akiba, in the Cyrillic script. The life and work of Branislav Nusic. Alchiviadi Nu?a, later Branislav Nusic (1864 - 1938) was a great Serbian literate, playwright, journalist, photographer, politician, diplomat, member of the Serbian Royal Academy, President of the Association of Yugoslav Playwrights, manager of the theaters in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Skopje and Sarajevo, and a military volunteer in the Serbian - Bulgarian war (1885). ?Roentgen?s Photography?. The author wrote this text in his own way, the only way he could and knew, vividly and wittily. He knew about the great power and strength of X-ray radiation, and he wrote of his knowledge in this short story. Without Branislav Nusic, the history of Serbian radiology would be poorer for not seeing the X-rays by the eyes of an educated, intelligent and, above all, humorous writer. Conclusion. Branislav Nusic, alongside Nikola Tesla, Mihajlo Pupin Idvorski, Dr. Abraham Vinaver, and all past and present Serbian radiologists, has become an essential and memorable link in the chain of the history of the Serbian radiology.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 5702
Author(s):  
Gabriel Iluebe Okolo ◽  
Stamos Katsigiannis ◽  
Turke Althobaiti ◽  
Naeem Ramzan

The global COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2019 and created major disruptions around the world demonstrated the imperative need for quick, inexpensive, accessible and reliable diagnostic methods that would allow the detection of infected individuals with minimal resources. Radiography, and more specifically, chest radiography, is a relatively inexpensive medical imaging modality that can potentially offer a solution for the diagnosis of COVID-19 cases. In this work, we examined eleven deep convolutional neural network architectures for the task of classifying chest X-ray images as belonging to healthy individuals, individuals with COVID-19 or individuals with viral pneumonia. All the examined networks are established architectures that have been proven to be efficient in image classification tasks, and we evaluated three different adjustments to modify the architectures for the task at hand by expanding them with additional layers. The proposed approaches were evaluated for all the examined architectures on a dataset with real chest X-ray images, reaching the highest classification accuracy of 98.04% and the highest F1-score of 98.22% for the best-performing setting.


1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
E. Hildner

AbstractOver the last twenty years, orbiting coronagraphs have vastly increased the amount of observational material for the whitelight corona. Spanning almost two solar cycles, and augmented by ground-based K-coronameter, emission-line, and eclipse observations, these data allow us to assess,inter alia: the typical and atypical behavior of the corona; how the corona evolves on time scales from minutes to a decade; and (in some respects) the relation between photospheric, coronal, and interplanetary features. This talk will review recent results on these three topics. A remark or two will attempt to relate the whitelight corona between 1.5 and 6 R⊙to the corona seen at lower altitudes in soft X-rays (e.g., with Yohkoh). The whitelight emission depends only on integrated electron density independent of temperature, whereas the soft X-ray emission depends upon the integral of electron density squared times a temperature function. The properties of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) will be reviewed briefly and their relationships to other solar and interplanetary phenomena will be noted.


Author(s):  
R. H. Duff

A material irradiated with electrons emits x-rays having energies characteristic of the elements present. Chemical combination between elements results in a small shift of the peak energies of these characteristic x-rays because chemical bonds between different elements have different energies. The energy differences of the characteristic x-rays resulting from valence electron transitions can be used to identify the chemical species present and to obtain information about the chemical bond itself. Although these peak-energy shifts have been well known for a number of years, their use for chemical-species identification in small volumes of material was not realized until the development of the electron microprobe.


Author(s):  
E. A. Kenik ◽  
J. Bentley

Cliff and Lorimer (1) have proposed a simple approach to thin foil x-ray analy sis based on the ratio of x-ray peak intensities. However, there are several experimental pitfalls which must be recognized in obtaining the desired x-ray intensities. Undesirable x-ray induced fluorescence of the specimen can result from various mechanisms and leads to x-ray intensities not characteristic of electron excitation and further results in incorrect intensity ratios.In measuring the x-ray intensity ratio for NiAl as a function of foil thickness, Zaluzec and Fraser (2) found the ratio was not constant for thicknesses where absorption could be neglected. They demonstrated that this effect originated from x-ray induced fluorescence by blocking the beam with lead foil. The primary x-rays arise in the illumination system and result in varying intensity ratios and a finite x-ray spectrum even when the specimen is not intercepting the electron beam, an ‘in-hole’ spectrum. We have developed a second technique for detecting x-ray induced fluorescence based on the magnitude of the ‘in-hole’ spectrum with different filament emission currents and condenser apertures.


Author(s):  
W. Brünger

Reconstructive tomography is a new technique in diagnostic radiology for imaging cross-sectional planes of the human body /1/. A collimated beam of X-rays is scanned through a thin slice of the body and the transmitted intensity is recorded by a detector giving a linear shadow graph or projection (see fig. 1). Many of these projections at different angles are used to reconstruct the body-layer, usually with the aid of a computer. The picture element size of present tomographic scanners is approximately 1.1 mm2.Micro tomography can be realized using the very fine X-ray source generated by the focused electron beam of a scanning electron microscope (see fig. 2). The translation of the X-ray source is done by a line scan of the electron beam on a polished target surface /2/. Projections at different angles are produced by rotating the object.During the registration of a single scan the electron beam is deflected in one direction only, while both deflections are operating in the display tube.


Author(s):  
L. T. Germinario

Understanding the role of metal cluster composition in determining catalytic selectivity and activity is of major interest in heterogeneous catalysis. The electron microscope is well established as a powerful tool for ultrastructural and compositional characterization of support and catalyst. Because the spatial resolution of x-ray microanalysis is defined by the smallest beam diameter into which the required number of electrons can be focused, the dedicated STEM with FEG is the instrument of choice. The main sources of errors in energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDS) are: (1) beam-induced changes in specimen composition, (2) specimen drift, (3) instrumental factors which produce background radiation, and (4) basic statistical limitations which result in the detection of a finite number of x-ray photons. Digital beam techniques have been described for supported single-element metal clusters with spatial resolutions of about 10 nm. However, the detection of spurious characteristic x-rays away from catalyst particles produced images requiring several image processing steps.


Author(s):  
W. Z. Chang ◽  
D. B. Wittry

Since Du Mond and Kirkpatrick first discussed the principle of a bent crystal spectrograph in 1930, curved single crystals have been widely utilized as spectrometric monochromators as well as diffractors for focusing x rays diverging from a point. Curved crystal diffraction theory predicts that the diffraction parameters - the rocking curve width w, and the peak reflection coefficient r of curved crystals will certainly deviate from those of their flat form. Due to a lack of curved crystal parameter data in current literature and the need for optimizing the choice of diffraction geometry and crystal materials for various applications, we have continued the investigation of our technique presented at the last conference. In the present abstract, we describe a more rigorous and quantitative procedure for measuring the parameters of curved crystals.The diffraction image of a singly bent crystal under study can be obtained by using the Johann geometry with an x-ray point source.


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