The Establishment and Development of Finite Element Model of Human Cervical Vertebra and Its Application Example

The incidence rate of cervical spondylosis is high,and due to the complicacy of cervical vertebra structure,irregularity of shapes and non-uniformity of components,sometimes it’s difficult to achieve planned objectives by experiments in vitro through stress and strain analysis. Besides,the biomechanical factors are of vital significance in the cause of spinal disorders. In this paper the author makes a summary of the present modeling of human cervical vertebra and describes the major methods of establishing the finite element model of human cervical vertebra through several self-constructed models. With the advance of computer technology,the finite element methods have been rapidly developed in cervical vertebra biomechanical researches and have became a major approach for biomechanical researches to simulate more and more clinical conditions.