Supporting Diagnosis and Treatment of Scoliosis: Using Augmented Reality to Calculate 3D Spine Models in Real-Time - ARScoliosis

Abstract

Scoliosis is a complex spinal disorder that mostly affects adolescents and younger population. To avoid and reduce harmful radiation techniques in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis investigation and follow-ups, a novel non-invasive approach is highly recommended and needed in clinical practice. In this paper ARScoliosis application to diagnose, visualize and document spinal condition and particularly adolescent idiopathic scoliosis in real time is presented. This ARScoliosis application is developed in Unity 3D, a game engine, and allows non-invasive quantification of posture and spinal deformity using recently available non-ionizing wide-angle depth sensor Microsoft Azure Kinect DK as a diagnostic medium. Parametric and scalable 3D model of the spine is registered to the internal spinal alignment extracted from the anatomical landmarks and joints in real time and visible over the specific patient. It is envisioned that ARScoliosis will support monitoring of scoliosis after applied therapy and include more diagnostic parameters, after final testing and validation against standard X-Ray imaging modalities. © 2020 IEEE.