Reliability of a New Smartphone Accessory for Scoliosis Measurements

Abstract

Abstract BACKGROUND: Idiopathic scoliosis is the most common pathology of the children’s spine, identified as spine lateral curvature with Cobb angle greater than 10°. The rapid development of technology allows, even mobile devices, to perform a quick and cheap diagnosis ensuring an accuracy similar to the Bunnell scoliometer. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to validate the accuracy of a newly developed accessory for measuring the angle of trunk rotation (ATR) using mobile devices. METHODS: ATR measurements were carried out on a group of 30 adults using 3 diagnostic tools: the Bunnell scoliometer, Scolioscreen, and mScolio designed by the authors. Scolioscreen and mScolio were used together with a smartphone and the Clinometer app. Three measurements were performed using each of the methods. RESULTS: The greatest data discrepancy was obtained between the Bunnell scoliometer and Scolioscreen (-3.7°÷4.4°) and was twice larger than between the Bunnell scoliometer and mScolio (-1.8°÷2.1°). The excellent agreement was obtained for the mScolio device, where the concordance correlation coefficient was 0.9381 (95% CI of 0.9076÷0.9588) and the interclass correlation coefficient was 0.9501 (95% CI of 0.9242÷0.9671). CONCLUSIONS: Tests showed excellent reliability and validity of ATR using the mScolio solution. Obtained results show excellent consistency between mScolio and the Brunnell scoliometer measurements.