An Accurate and Efficient Instrument for Monitoring Chest Wall Therapy

Monitoring the progress of therapeutic treatment is paramount to its success and to the patient's quality-of-life. An efficient, cost-effective, and accurate assessment of the treatment's progress that illustrates its tangible impact can motivate patients and guide the procedure. This work discusses such an assessment tool for both surgical and nonsurgical interventions to correct pectus excavatum - the most common chest wall deformity. The developed instrument utilizes optical scanning and registration techniques to provide an accurate evaluation of the improvement over the course of treatment. In this paper, a prospective study is conducted to report on and establish the validity of the instrument after deploying it for clinical use. Statistical tests are used to study the utility of the system in a clinical setting.