A knowledge based system for diagnosing spinal deformations: moire pattern analysis and interpretation

For young people, spinal deformations are an evolving process which must be detected and treated as early as possible. The moire technique is quite simple, not expensive, not aggressive and well suited to the detection of spinal rotations. Therefore, a computer vision system for recognition of spinal deformations would be very useful for decision support. The authors present a knowledge-based system for diagnosing spinal deformations from human back moire image. To realize this computer system, the approach consists of extracting fringe contours from moire images using the infinite size symmetric exponential filter which is an optimal smoothing filter, then localizing some relevant elements such as the centers of shoulder-blades and the spinal column to make measurement which are crucial for the diagnosis process, and finally performing 3D reconstruction and diagnosis