In vitro testing of the spine provides valuable information to
researchers and clinicians about how neurosurgical procedures
affect spinal stability and motion (Crawford, 2002). The Spinal
Biomechanics Laboratory has devised several novel techniques for
experimentally testing cadaveric spines, enabling researchers at
our institution to study spinal biomechanics in ways that were
not possible at other institutions. Many of these techniques are
incorporated in the custom software developed in the Spinal
Biomechanics Laboratory. This software is now used not only at
Barrow, but has also been provided by Barrow for use in other
biomechanics laboratories at universities in the United States.
Local Coordinate Systems In the Spinal Biomechanics Laboratory,
a technique was devised to enable each level of the spine to be
tracked and studied independently (Crawford and Dickman, 1997 ).
With this technique, the researcher points to specific vertebral
landmarks with a probe in which optical markers are embedded.
Custom t