Usefulness of 3-Dimensional Body Surface Scanning in the Evaluation of Patients with Pectus Carinatum

Abstract

Background: Radiographic modalities have been commonly used to evaluate pectus carinatum (PC), and compressive orthotic bracing is the most widely accepted treatment method. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of 3-dimensional (3D) body surface scanning as an alternative modality for the evaluation of PC. Methods: The medical records of 63 patients with PC who were treated with compressive orthotic bracing therapy between July 2017 and February 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. Using both 2-view chest radiography (posteroanterior and lateral view) and 3D body scanning, the height of maximal protrusion of the chest wall was measured both before and after 2 weeks of bracing therapy. The difference between the pre-and post-treatment measurements was calculated for both modalities, and these differences were compared and analyzed. Results: Based on the comparison between the pre-and post-treatment radiographs, bracing therapy produced favorable outcomes in all patients (p<0.001). The measurements obtained via 3D scanning were strongly correlated with those obtained via chest radiography (r=0.60). Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, 3D body surface scanning appears to be an effective, radiation-free, and simple method for the post-treatment follow-up evaluation of PC, and thus can be considered an alternative to radiography.

Assessment and treatment of pectus deformities: a review of reverse engineering and 3D printing techniques

“…A particular study was proposed by (Buonamici et al , 2019) who suggested a hybrid technique by analyzing both the depth image and the bi-dimensional image (provided by the red blu green depth, RGB-D, device) to detect the chest elevation during the VB treatment. Song et al (2020) studied the efficacy of the compression brace on a sample of 63 patients, evaluating severity before treatment and after 2 weeks of the compression brace usage, observing a statistically significant improvement of the pathology severity, which was also confirmed by Wong et al (2014) on a sample of 50 patients. On the other hand, the evaluation of efficacy for surgical treatments was studied in the cases of thoracic bar insertion for PE correction (Gomes-Fonseca et al , 2017; Port et al , 2019; Uemura et al , 2021) and surgical PC correction (Port et al , 2018).…”

“…The second category of targets is the main topic of Glinkowski et al (2009), Lain et al (2017), Uccheddu et al (2018), Kidane et al (2019), Deng et al (2020a, 2020b), Song et al (2020), Servi et al (2021). Perez et al (2006) analyzed the accuracy, resolution and repeatability of the VistusSmart (Human Solutions; Kaiserslautern), concluding that the 3D scanner is suitable for tracking the progression of the deformity and to analyze pre- and post-surgical pathological condition.…”

“…On the other hand, several studies (Glinkowski et al , 2009; Lain et al , 2017; Uccheddu et al , 2018; Kidane et al , 2019; Deng et al , 2020a, 2020b, Song et al , 2020; Servi et al , 2021) proposed ad-hoc devices for chest acquisition, combining commercial devices (including Microsoft Kinect v1, Microsoft Kinect v2, Intel RealSense D415) with hardware structures specifically designed to better acquire the region of interest. The realized devices can be divided into multi-camera (Glinkowski et al , 2009; Lain et al , 2017) or single-camera (Uccheddu et al , 2018; Kidane et al , 2019; Deng et al , 2020a, 2020b, Song et al , 2020; Servi et al , 2021) scanners with manual (Deng et al , 2020a, 2020b, Servi et al , 2021), or automatic (Glinkowski et al , 2009; Lain et al , 2017; Uccheddu et al , 2018; Kidane et al , 2019; Song et al , 2020) handling.…”

“…The evaluation of the efficacy of non-surgical treatments was addressed in the case of PE for the VB device (Buonamici et al , 2019; Gao et al , 2020), and in the case of PC for the compression brace (Wong et al , 2014; Song et al , 2020). Specifically, these studies focused on the study of the pathological condition pre and post treatment.…”

Efficiency of non-operative management for pectus deformities in children using an X-ray-free protocol

“…Thus, most practitioners favour other criteria such as depth measurements using an external gauge or 3D scanning [ 15–17 ]. The first measurement is readily and quickly accessible but its reproducibility is questionable.…”