Mathbio Colloquium Thursday at 3:30 in MG2050

Garrett McCormack will be speaking on:

“Vertebral Motion Testing Analysis of the Lumbar Spine”
Practitioners of osteopathic medicine previously relied upon a physicians judgment to diagnose lower back pain through a series of osteopathic manipulations. With advancements in technology it has become possible to precisely measure the movements that occur during a manipulation using 3-dimensional camera systems and pressure sensitive devices attached to the thumbs and digits of the practicing physician. This opens the door for more objective measurement and analysis of the process of osteopathic manipulation. Through the development of computer software to aid physicians in analyzing data acquired from these new technologies, improved methods of manipulation and diagnosis are possible.
This talk will focus on work and research done in developing software to better aid in the analysis of osteopathic manipulations of the lumbar vertebra. Combining many aspects of mathematics, computer science, and osteopathic medicine, software was developed to quickly and efficiently present and analyze data obtained from motion tests. Topics included are the use of the Perl programming language and a presentation of the cross platform windowing system used in creating a suitable graphical user interface.