Parametric Patient-Specific Finite Element Modeling of Lumbar Spine Based on Anatomical Parameters

  Low back pain is one of the most common problems that force individuals to seek medical care. Since surgery is the last treatment strategy, predicting the process of conducting surgical procedures seems beneficial and somehow crucial. In this regard, the first step is having a validated biomechanical model based on the anatomical parameters of patients’ lumbar spine. Despite the impressive progress in this field, there is still a need to designing a model that could include important anatomical parameters and be applicable in terms of clinical applications. This study aimed to develop the personalized spinal finite element model with 23 anatomical parameters. The initial data was extracted from the radiology picture of the average healthy volunteers and was designed in Catia software. Afterwards, the finite element model was analyzed in Abaqus, and results of the range of motion of motionsegments in movements of flexion, extension and left and right lateral bending were verified based on the results of experimental studies present in the literature. In order to observe the application of the patient-specific spinal parametric model, a model of a patient after spinal fusion was presented. Moreover, results of the range of motion of the motion segments and intradiscal pressure were compared to the healthy model. Since acceptable results were obtained at each step, it is possible to predict the result of spinal fusion and compare the biomechanical results in case of decreased or increased fusion level by developing a parametric parient-specific model for each patient, which can be an effective achievement for clinical fields.