The Time Effectiveness of Three-Dimensional Telediagnostic Postural Screening of Back Curvatures and Scoliosis

Abstract

Postural screening remains a powerful tool that can be used to identify children and adolescents with scoliosis or sagittal plane deformities. The aim of this study was to assess the time effectiveness of implemented telediagnostic screening procedures. Medical images (virtual objects) of acquired clouds of points of 100 subjects of both sexes were chosen at random from the database and used for parametric evaluation for this study. This study was performed using a newly developed three-dimensional (3D) back surface topography measurement system for posture and scoliosis using a structured light method. The duration of each step of therapist/nurse/physician-assisted 3D assessment was measured independently with a stopwatch. Two configurations of PC computers and Internet connections were used to test the time effectiveness. Scoliotic postures were detected using cutoff values of angle of trunk rotation, Posterior Trunk Symmetry Index, and Deformity in the Axial Plane Index indices. The overall assessment of all subjects consumed from 2 h 55 min 55 s to 3 h 18 min 59 s dependent on PC and Internet connection configuration. Average examination time per subject ranged from 2 min 43 s to 4 min 51 s, respectively. The virtual landmarking and report generation times were dependent on the PC configuration (p<0.001). Our study confirmed satisfactory time effectiveness of the implemented telediagnostic postural screening procedure. We assume that it may influence the cost-effectiveness of the screening, which is usually mentioned as an important factor for recommendations against postural school screening. Relatively fast Internet connection and a medium-level PC configuration are sufficient for achieving a reasonably short time of 3D posture assessment of a virtual object representing a real subject's back surface. The efficiency of remote assessment of exact 3D surface topography can be used in large-scale studies for posture and scoliosis epidemiology.