Simulation of Cervical Cord Compression Using Finite Element Method (FEM)

Cervical myelopathy results in loss of nerves functions along the spinal cord below the damage area as it is the result of spinal cord compression which nowadays always occur during traffic accidents. Patients with cervical myelopathy do not necessarily share the same symptoms. These vary according to the degree of cervical cord compression and cross sectional shape at every segment of cervical cord which caused difficulties in diagnosis. In this study, two dimension model of every cervical cord segment were built. Then, differences of compression results in every segment were verified. After that, to verify the effects of compression to other segments, three dimensions model of cervical cord model is built. From this study, we can see that cervical cord with flat shaped gray matter have higher stress distribution than cervical cord with hill shaped grey matter. Other than that, the injury start occurred in ventral column of white matter instead of gray matter during early injury stage.