Application of FEM for modeling of cervical spine injury as supportive diagnostic method

Cervical spinal cord injury is one of most devastating and most dangerous type of failure in modern medicine. From the other hand knowledge of forces, accelerations and muscle forces acting during accidents as well as results in tissue damage is highly limited. Information about accident circumstances can be collected by experimental crash-tests or by numerical modeling [1]. In the case of tissue damage estimation however it is exists necessity of development of new diagnostic techniques and tools allowing predict patient neurological conditions during the treatment period. One of the most promising method allowing estimation of tissue damage on the base of calculations of stress and strain numerical calculation is FE modeling. The main aim of this project is to develop individual FE models allowing calculations of displacement, stress and strain levels in spinal cord tissues of real patients and correlate them with patients neurological conditions. The range of project consists selection of patients of Neurological Department in Wrocław Medical University, MRI examination, measurement of cervical spinal cord geometry and geometry of injury, development of procedure for automatic FE model development, analysis of strain and stress distribution, preliminary correlation of those mechanical parameters with neurological conditions of patients.