Reproducibility of spinal back-contour measurements taken with raster stereography in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.

200 children with a mean age of 12.7 years were measured with the Quantec Spinal Image System (QSIS), which uses computerized raster stereography technology. The aim of the study was to assess the intraobserver reproducibility of QSIS metrics in scoliosis patients and to quantify the effect of postural sway on the measurements. Children were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups: Group 1 contained 198 subjects, having 3 digitized measurements of 1 scan; Group 2 contained 200 subjects, undergoing 3 separate QSIS scans with 1 measurenent of each scan. Random-effects variance components models were fit to each outcome variable of interest (subject, scan or measurement) separately for the single scan dataset and the 3 scan dataset. They revealed that data from Group 2 contained greater reliability than data from Group 1 (reliability > or = 80%). The reliability of these parameters was perfect if one performed 3 scans and 3 measurements per scan. Results demonstrate that the QSIS with 3 scans and 1 measurement yields reproducible data from mild idiopathic scoliosis patients and that postural sway has minimal effect on data reproducibility.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes