Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the Third Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Overview of vertebral injuries
- 2 Anatomic considerations
- 3 Biomechanical considerations
- 4 Imaging of vertebral trauma I: indications and controversies
- 5 Imaging of vertebral trauma II: radiography, computed tomography, and myelography
- 6 Imaging of vertebral trauma III: magnetic resonance imaging
- 7 Mechanisms of injury and their “fingerprints”
- 8 Radiologic “footprints” of vertebral injury: the ABCS
- 9 Vertebral injuries in children
- 10 Vertebral stability and instability
- 11 Normal variants and pseudofractures
- Index
3 - Biomechanical considerations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the Third Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Overview of vertebral injuries
- 2 Anatomic considerations
- 3 Biomechanical considerations
- 4 Imaging of vertebral trauma I: indications and controversies
- 5 Imaging of vertebral trauma II: radiography, computed tomography, and myelography
- 6 Imaging of vertebral trauma III: magnetic resonance imaging
- 7 Mechanisms of injury and their “fingerprints”
- 8 Radiologic “footprints” of vertebral injury: the ABCS
- 9 Vertebral injuries in children
- 10 Vertebral stability and instability
- 11 Normal variants and pseudofractures
- Index
Summary
The previous chapter dealt with the pertinent anatomy of the vertebral column. This chapter discusses the salient biomechanical principles of vertebral motion. An understanding of basic vertebral biomechanics is necessary in order to fully comprehend the principles needed to diagnose vertebral injuries by imaging. A detailed discussion of vertebral biomechanics is beyond the scope of this book. Much of the material contained in this chapter was gleaned from the excellent text by White and Panjabi, Clinical Biomechanics of the Spine [1], to which the reader is referred for a more in-depth discussion.
Definitions
This discussion uses a number of biomechanical terms, some of which may be unfamiliar to the reader. For this reason, I include the following glossary:
Dynamics: the branch of mechanics that studies the loads and motions of interacting bodies.
Kinematics: the branch of mechanics that studies the motion of bodies without taking into account the forces that produce that motion. It is the study of motion without regard to forces.
Kinetics: the branch of mechanics that studies the relationships between forces acting on a body and the changes that those forces produce in body motion. More simply, it is the study of forces as well as motion.
Translation: the movement of a body in the same direction relative to a fixed point.
Rotation: any spinning motion or angular displacement of a body about an axis. […]
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- Information
- Imaging of Vertebral Trauma , pp. 36 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011