Metastatic survey of the patients with known primary malignancies with bone scan is one of the most common studies in nuclear medicine. Unfortunately the conventional planar bone scan has a very low specificity for differentiating benign from malignant lesions especially in the spinal column. In this study, we compared the specificity of SPECT imaging and convention...

In this paper, an innovative data pre-processing method to improve the classification performance and to determine automatically the vertebral column disorders including disk hernia (DH), spondylolisthesis (SL) and normal (NO) groups has been proposed. In the classification of vertebral column disorders' dataset with three classes, a pairwise fuzzy C-means (FCM) based feature weighting method h...

Despite their semi-aquatic mode of life, modern crocodylians use a wide range of terrestrial locomotor behaviours, including asymmetrical gaits otherwise only found in mammals. The key to these diverse abilities may lie in the axial skeleton. Correlations between vertebral morphology and both intervertebral joint stiffness and locomotor behaviour have been found in other animals, but the verteb...

The intervertebral discs, located between adjacent vertebrae, are required for stability of the spine and distributing mechanical load throughout the vertebral column. All cell types located in the middle regions of the discs, called nuclei pulposi, are derived from the embryonic notochord. Recently, it was shown that the hedgehog signaling pathway plays an essential role during formation of nu...

Congenital agenesis of lumbar vertebrae was diagnosed in a day-old female lamb based on radiology and clinical examinations. There was no neurological deficit in hindlimb and forelimb associated with standing disability. Radiography of the abdominal region revealed absence of lumbar vertebrae. Necropsy confirmed clinical and radiographic results. No other anomaly or agenesis was seen macroscopi...

The hero shrew's (Scutisorex somereni) massive interlocking lumbar vertebrae represent the most extreme modification of the vertebral column known in mammals. No intermediate form of this remarkable morphology is known, nor is there any convincing theory to explain its functional significance. We document a new species in the heretofore monotypic genus Scutisorex; the new species possesses cran...

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY The diagnosis of equine back disorders is challenging. Objectively determining movement of the vertebral column may therefore be of value in a clinical setting. OBJECTIVES To establish whether surface-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs) can be used to establish normal values for range of motion (ROM) of the vertebral column in a uniform population of horses ...

Two partial vertebral columns of Australopithecus sediba grant insight into aspects of early hominin spinal mobility, lumbar curvature, vertebral formula, and transitional vertebra position. Au. sediba likely possessed five non-rib-bearing lumbar vertebrae and five sacral elements, the same configuration that occurs modally in modern humans. This finding contrasts with other interpretations of ...