Abstract
The spine consists of vertebrae separated by flexible intervertebral disks. The intervertebral disks act as the flexible spacer between vertebrae and carry significant compressive loads from gravitational and muscle forces. The spine fixation surgery apply to many spinal disorders. The rigid fixation, however, might cause the damage of intervertebral disks. Therefore, it is important to develop the spinal fixation device with the biological intervertebral stiffness. In this study, the flexion, extension, lateral bending and axial rotation stiffness of bovine lumber spine were measured experimentally. And, the finite element based optimization technique was used to design the posterior fixation device with measured stiffness. As a result, optimal design of posterior fixation device was obtained using the proposed method.
