An Automated Tool for Measuring Lumbar Spinal Canal Diameter

In this paper, an automated software tool for measuring the diameter of lumbar spinal canal is designed, implemented, and tested. The value of the diameter is used in the diagnosis of Lumbar Spinal Stenosis (LSS). The goal of the tool is to remove requirement of human intervention to determine the diameter which makes the process faster and more accurate. The tool takes a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) image and processes it using different MATLAB functions. Testing the tool against 17 real cases showed that they were accurately diagnosed using the measurements of tool. In addition, it saves the physician’s time spent in measuring and diagnosing the stenosis manually.