| 摘要 |
A substantially spherical semiconductor ball implanted in orthopedic structures for sensing and/or stimulation. In one embodiment, a vertebral column (800) having a number of intervertebral discs (802) interspersed among respective vertebral bodies (804), material placed in intervertebral discs (802) allows for a semi-synthetic vertebral disc (806) to be constructed. The artificial intervertebral disk (806) contains one or more ball sensors (808) located within the body of the disk (806) in order to monitor the compression forces. Conventionally, the semi-synthetic disc (806) is monitored only retrospectively, and visualized on x-ray. In this particular embodiment, any of a number of semi-synthetic intervertebral discs (806) can be implanted with one or more ball sensors (808) such that stress and compression forces can be monitored to assure proper alignment of vertebrae (810) in the vertebral column (800), and to monitor the development of any nonphysiologic forces due to vertebral degeneration, disk malfunction, and so on.
|
