‘Functional prognosis simulation of patient-specific spinal treatment’, or MySpine, is led by former IBEC leader Damien Lacroix, with senior research associate Jérôme Noailly of the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology group as IP. The project aims to develop a ‘virtual spine’ to guide clinicians towards the best treatment for various back pathologies based on data specific to individual patients.
At the meeting on 14th June, representatives from each partner institution and the leaders of the work packages presented the project’s progress during its first year. In their subsequent report, reviewers Prof. Dr. med. Michael Pfeiffer, Dr. Barnabas Takacs and Dr. Kathleen Curran and the European Commission’s project officer Dr. Amalia Vlad declared MySpine an ambitious project which nevertheless has achieved most of its objectives so far, awarding it a final score of ‘good’ progress, and that significant work has been performed resulting in high impact peer-reviewed journal publications.
So far, the MySpine consortium partners have collected a database of 386 cases for their retrospective studies, implemented the necessary image analysis techniques, and developed biomechanical models of the lumbar spine. In the next one-and-a-half years of the project’s run, it is planned that the consortium will integrate the various work packages with the aim of presenting a clinically feasible tool.
