The Time Effectiveness of Three-Dimensional Telediagnostic Postural Screening of Back Curvatures and Scoliosis

Background: Postural screening remains a powerful tool that can be used to identify children and adolescents with scoliosis or sagittal plane deformities. The aim of this study was to assess the time effectiveness of implemented telediagnostic screening procedures. Materials and Methods: Medical images (virtual objects) of acquired clouds of points of 100 subjects of both sexes were chosen at random from the database and used for parametric evaluation for this study. This study was performed using a newly developed three-dimensional (3D) back surface topography measurement system for posture and scoliosis using a structured light method. The duration of each step of therapist/nurse/physician-assisted 3D assessment was measured independently with a stopwatch. Two configurations of PC computers and Internet connections were used to test the time effectiveness. Scoliotic postures were detected using cutoff values of angle of trunk rotation, Posterior Trunk Symmetry Index, and Deformity in the Axial Plane Index indices. Results: The overall assessment of all subjects consumed from 2 h 55 min 55 s to 3 h 18 min 59 s dependent on PC and Internet connection configuration. Average examination time per subject ranged from 2 min 43 s to 4 min 51 s, respectively. The virtual landmarking and report generation times were dependent on the PC configuration ( p