Deakin University
Browse

Evaluation of lumbar disc and spine morphology: long-term repeatability and comparison of methods

Version 2 2024-06-17, 11:42
Version 1 2015-03-17, 14:27
journal contribution
posted on 2012-01-01, 00:00 authored by Daniel Belavy, G Armbrecht, D Felsenberg
Establishing the long-term repeatability of quantitative measures of lumbar intervertebral disc and spinal morphology is important for planning interventional studies. We aimed to examine this issue and to determine to what extent a smaller number of measurements per disc or vertebral level could be used to save operator time without compromising measurement precision. Twenty-one healthy male subjects were scanned at baseline and 1.5 years later. On sagittal MR-scans intervertebral disc cross-sectional area, anterior disc height, posterior disc height, intervertebral angle and intervertebral length were measured. The repeatability of the average value from all sagittal images or from 1, 3, 5 or 7 images centred at the spinous process was evaluated. Bland-Altman analysis showed all measurements to be repeatable between testing days. Intervertebral length was the most precise measurement (coefficients of variation [CVs] between 1.2% and 1.5%), followed by disc cross-sectional area (CVs between 2.9% and 3.6%). Variance component analysis showed that using 7 images, but not 1, 3 or 5 images, resulted in a similar level of measurement error as when measurements from all images were included.

History

Journal

Physiological measurement

Volume

33

Issue

8

Pagination

1313 - 1321

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Location

London, Eng.

eISSN

1361-6579

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2012, IOP Publishing