Spinal vertebrae localization and analysis on disproportionality in curvature using radiography—a comprehensive review

Abstract

In human anatomy, the central nervous system (CNS) acts as a significant processing hub. CNS is clinically divided into two major parts: the brain and the spinal cord. The spinal cord assists the overall communication network of the human anatomy through the brain. The mobility of body and the structure of the whole skeleton is also balanced with the help of the spinal bone, along with reflex control. According to the Global Burden of Disease 2010, worldwide, back pain issues are the leading cause of disability. The clinical specialists in the field estimate almost 80% of the population with experience of back issues. The segmentation of the vertebrae is considered a difficult procedure through imaging. The problem has been catered by different researchers using diverse hand-crafted features like Harris corner, template matching, active shape models, and Hough transform. Existing methods do not handle the illumination changes and shape-based variations. The low-contrast and unclear view of the vertebrae also makes it difficult to get good results. In recent times, convolutional nnural Network (CNN) has taken the research to the next level, producing high-accuracy results. Different architectures of CNN such as UNet, FCN, and ResNet have been used for segmentation and deformity analysis. The aim of this review article is to give a comprehensive overview of how different authors in different times have addressed these issues and proposed different mythologies for the localization and analysis of curvature deformity of the vertebrae in the spinal cord.