A Simple Approach for 3D Reconstruction of the Spine from Biplanar Radiography

This paper proposed a simple approach for 3D spinal reconstruction from biplanar radiography. The proposed reconstruction consisted in reconstructing the 3D central curve of the spine based on the epipolar geometry and automatically aligning vertebrae under the constraint of this curve. The vertebral orientations were adjusted by matching the projections of the 3D pedicles with the 2D pedicles in biplanar radiographs. The user interaction time was within one minute for a thoracic spine. Sixteen pairs of radiographs of a thoracic spinal model were used to evaluate the precision and accuracy. The precision was within 3.1 mm for the location and 3.5 degrees for the orientation. The accuracy was within 3.5 mm for the location and 3.9 degrees for the orientation. These results demonstrate that this approach can be a promising tool to obtain the 3D spinal geometry with acceptable user interactions in scoliotic clinics.