Current models of the lumbar spine used for research and development are either anatomically equivalent or mechanically similar to the human spine. Human spines have appropriate anatomy, but have high variance in properties, change mechanically with degradation, are expensive and are difficult to obtain. Animal spines are inexpensive and readily available, but lack close similarity to the human spine and they also degrade over time. Current synthetic models of the lumbar spine do not change properties over time, but are not anatomically similar to the human spine. This study focused on improving the manufacturing techniques of the lumbar spine model and comparing its mechanical response to human cadaver lumbar spines. The synthetic mechanical analogue lumbar spine models developed in this study were aimed to achieve a net average mechanical response within one standard deviation of the target cadaver human lumbar spine model.
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