Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Analysis, Segmentation And Prediction Of Knee Cartilage Using Statistical Shape Models, Joseph Michael Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee is one of the leading causes of chronic disability (along with the hip). Due to rising healthcare costs associated with OA, it is important to fully understand the disease and how it progresses in the knee. One symptom of knee OA is the degeneration of cartilage in the articulating knee. The cartilage pad plays a major role in painting the biomechanical picture of the knee. This work attempts to quantify the cartilage thickness of healthy male and female knees using statistical shape models (SSMs) for a deep knee bend activity. Additionally, novel cartilage segmentation from …

Discrete Geometric Based Stress Analysis Of The Lumbar Soft Tissues From In Vivo Kinematics, Joseph W. Mitchell

Doctoral Dissertations

Back pain in the region of the lumbar spine has become an increasingly significant problem among individuals in the United States and is a leading cause of disability and missed work days. At present, efforts focused on treating both the symptoms and causes of low back pain have proven to be difficult, and researchers and clinicians still do not fully understand the most effective means for treating the symptoms. Utilizing a biomechanics approach, it is assumed that lower back pain is, at least in part, associated with an increased localized stress.

Current models used to determine stresses are typically based …

Development Of A Computational Methodology For Evaluating In Vivo Vertebral Mechanics In Subjects Having Various Conditions Of The Lumbar Spine, Christopher Brian Carr

Doctoral Dissertations

Treating and evaluating the causes of low back pain (LBP) is difficult and not fully understood. However, assessing the in vivo motions and loading characteristics in the lumbar spine may provide important data for progressing the diagnosis and treatment of pathologies linked with LBP.

This dissertation describes the development of a comprehensive approach for collecting both the kinematics and kinetics of the lumbar vertebrae under in vivo conditions. Forty-four subjects representing healthy, symptomatic, pathological, and surgically implanted (pre- and post-operative) conditions of the lumbar spine were evaluated using dynamic fluoroscopy and 3D-to-2D image registration to assess the motions of the …

Universal Personal Transfer, Arian Nasab

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.