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Abstract
Scoliosis is a disease that causes abnormal three dimensional curvatures of the spine and ribcage. The disease is often treated with an externally applied device called a thoracolumbar orthosis (brace). The objective of this research is to develop a new method to design and evaluate custom built braces.
A digital design model was implemented to modify the digital torso surface data obtained from a 3D imaging system. The model uses two correction factors, rotation and translation, to modify the original digital torso surface into a shape that corrects the spinal curvature by shifting the points on the torso surface. Evaluation methods were developed to measure clinical outcomes of the corrected shape as well as to estimate the perceived comfort of the final brace. Optimization techniques were employed to create a brace to achieve the maximal amount of curve correction while providing the minimal amount of patient discomfort.
