ABSTRACT
Many people suffer from low-back pain, a major reason of that pain is degenerative disc disease (DDD), as an alternative to intervertebral disc, an artificial disc serves to replace the damaged degenerated disc. To reduce later complications after implantation surgery it’s important to use a matching vertebrae endplate geometry artificial implant. Vertebra bone material properties and geometry depend mainly on age, sex and effect of some bone diseases such as Osteoporosis which decrease bone density and even change its geometry. Finite element simulation is an effective way to analyze vertebra bone models in order to provide a custom made implant design to the patient as each patient’s vertebra has unique endplates geometry and different bone material properties. This study targets to developing a methodology to create patient-specific finite element model with volume mesh generation, and material assignment using medical digital imaging in order to design a matching endplate patient-specific lumbar disc artificial implant and test its validation. A patient-specific finite element model of the lumbar spine vertebra L5 has been developed, CT data are used to create geometrical model and assign its materials. To test validation of the model, Finite element analysis of the created model is performed and stress, strain distribution and total deformation has been established.
