Determining spinal geometry and in particular the position and orientation of the intervertebral disks is an integral part of nearly every spinal examination with Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging. It is particularly important for the standardized alignment of the scan geometry with the spine. In this paper, we present a novel method that combines Marginal Space Learn...

BACKGROUND This randomized controlled trial was carried out to (1) evaluate the effect of nucleoplasty with coblation on the PLA2 activity in the degenerative intervertebral disks of an animal model and (2) explore the possible therapeutic mechanism of coblation in addition to the current theory, which focuses on decreasing the intradiskal pressure in the treatment of intervertebral disk degene...

of that relationship are understood, and that joint disorders other than internal derangements occasionally occur. The difficulty I have is that the physician-dentist community at large is not united in its approach to TMJ problems. This stems in part from the diversity of specialists and generalists who involve themselves in this area of medicine; the TMJ has been claimed by everyone but not r...

A patient with seronegative rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who presented with intervertebral disk calcification (IDC) of several thoracic and lumbar intervertebral disks in herein described. There was no evidence of any other coexisting diseases such as ochronosis and hemochromatosis, but a remarkable degree of polyclonal hypergammaglobulinemia was observed as a notable finding. Although the appeara...

The nucleus pulposus of the intervertebral disk contains high amounts of the proteoglycan aggrecan, which confers the disk with a remarkable ability to resist compression. Other molecules such as collagens and noncollagenous proteins in the extracellular matrix are also essential for function. During disk degeneration, aggrecan and other molecules are lost due to proteolysis. This can result in...

A cadaver's vertebral column, a phantom, and a volunteer were imaged on a 1.5-T MR scanner to study the thin, uniform, dark, transverse lines that characterize some intervertebral disks. An artifactual dark line appears when the field of view (FOV) and matrix steps (n) are chosen so that d = FOV/n, where d equals the intervertebral disk height, or spacing between phantom vertebrae. The artifact...

Radial tears of the anulus fibrosus, which anatomic studies suggest are a primary event in disk degeneration, can be detected by diskography or MR imaging. We compared the sensitivity of MR and diskography in the detection of anular tears. MR, diskography, and cryomicrotomy anatomic sectioning were performed in eight cadaver lumbar spines. Diskography demonstrated 15 radial tears in 36 interver...

BACKGROUND Characteristics of Prolapsed Intervertebral Disc (PID) in two tertiary care hospitals of Pakistan. The objective of this was to study the demographic characteristics of lumbar PID by age, gender, clinical presentation, levels of spinal column involvement, treatment options and post-operative complications for lumber disc prolapse. METHODS One thousand and fifty eight cases (708 mal...

The present knowledge of the pathology of ankylosing spondylitis is based on clinical radiology, on the macroscopic study of macerated vertebrae, and on histological studies mainly of decalcified material (Van Swaay, 1950; Forestier, Jacqueline, and Rotes-Querol, 1951; Aufdermaur, 1954; Engfeldt, Romanus, and Yden, 1954; Cruickshank, 1956; Ott and Wurm, 1957). An important step in the developme...