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September, 19th, 2024 - Press notes

Hospital del Mar and UPF, with the European project Disc4All, create a database of 3D models of the spine that is unique in the world

The database, which is accessible to the entire scientific community, contains 16,807 models of the thoracolumbar part of the spine. It can help with the design of personalized models for patients with spinal deformities, thus improving their diagnosis and treatment.

A research team, led by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) with the collaboration of Hospital del Mar, has created a unique database in the world containing 16,807 different three-dimensional virtual models of the spine, specifically of the thoracic and lumbar areas, using computational systems. It is an open science project and the database has been shared with the entire scientific community through the European research repository Zenodo. Thanks to the European project Disc4All, led by UPF, these models can also be viewed and downloaded via the Spineview application, co-developed by UPF and the company InSilicoTrials.

Images of the first customized models of the thoracolumbar spine corresponding to 10 of the 42 patients in the sample

This database has been created as part of research aimed at improving the diagnosis and personalized treatment of spinal deformities, in line with the growing trend towards personalized medicine. This deformity, which is highly prevalent among the adult population, causes curvature of the spine in relation to the pelvis, giving rise to so-called sagittal imbalance. If the patient undergoes an operation, the risk of post-surgical complication of mechanical origin is by no means minor, and there is a great need to improve the prognosis and personalized planning.

The results of the research have been published recently in the journal Scientific Data (Nature). In addition to the BCN MedTech research unit at the Department of Engineering at UPF and Hospital del Mar, the study has involved researchers from two Italian institutions: the technology company InSilicoTrials in Trieste, and the IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi in Milan.

Towards more precise diagnoses and treatments for spinal deformity

This study comes in response to the need to create effective and scientifically validated models to analyse deformities of the thoracolumbar part of the spine, which were not available until now. "Using the database we have created, it will be possible to generate personalized computational models of the thoracolumbar part of a specific patient and obtain more accurate diagnoses and treatment plans, which leads to personalized therapies", explains Jérôme Noailly, head of the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (BMMB) research area of the UPF BCN MedTech Unit.

As a starting point, the research has taken as a reference a mechanical model of the standard structure of the spine, in accordance with previous studies, with the vertebrae, ligaments and articular contacts with the spine, as well as the intervertebral discs, but without considering individual morphological variations. Thanks to the numerical model of finite elements -a method widely used in different fields of engineering that discretizes the basic components of a structure into basic elements-, it is possible to calculate the impact that a movement or mechanical load (simulated virtually) might have on each of the tissues present in the model of the column and mapped along the discrete mesh. Using a simile, a similar method could be used for calculating the strength of the different elements of a bridge.

Based on this mechanical structure of the spine, were generated 16,807 personalized 3D models of the thoracolumbar part. The biomechanical response of these models, was also subsequently validated with experiments based on information and data from donor patients.

Reference article

Rasouligandomani, M., del Arco, A., Chemorion, F.K. et al. Dataset of Finite Element Models of Normal and Deformed Thoracolumbar Spine. Sci Data 11, 549 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03351-8