Evaluation of damage to the lumbar spine vertebrae L5 by finite element analysis

Abstract

Bone metastasis to the spine, pelvis or hip in patients with prostate cancer is a pathology that occurs in approximately 80% of cases. Metastases in the spine can cause pain, instability and neurological injuries. Therefore, it is relevant to evaluate when critical conditions have been reached and the structural integrity of the bone is compromised. Numerical methods based on patient data, obtained through post-processing of medical images, provide a tool to model the complexity of the biological tissue material. Computed axial tomography (CT) together with segmentation tools allows the reconstruction of 3D bone models that include mechanical properties, and that represents the anisotropic condition of bone structures. In this work, we present the L5 lumbar vertebra model of a patient affected by metastases and evaluate biomarkers to indicate the level of damage, compared with the reference case of healthy bone in an initial stage.