Reliability of a New Smartphone Accessory for Scoliosis Measurements

Abstract

Background: Idiopathic scoliosis is the most common pathology of the children's spine, identified as spine lateral curvature with Cobb angle greater than 10 deg. The rapid development of technology allows, even mobile devices, to perform a quick and cheap diagnosis ensuring an accuracy similar to the Bunnell scoliometer. Objective: The study aimed to validate the accuracy of a newly developed accessory for measuring the angle of trunk rotation (ATR) using mobile devices. Methods: ATR measurements were carried out on a group of 30 adults using three diagnostic tools: the Bunnell scoliometer, Scolioscreen, and mScolio designed by the authors. Scolioscreen and mScolio were used together with a smartphone and the Clinometer app. Three measurements were performed using each of the methods. Results: The greatest data discrepancy was obtained between the Bunnell scoliometer and Scolioscreen (–3.7 ÷ 4.4 deg) and was twice larger than between the Bunnell scoliometer and mScolio (–1.8 ÷ 2.1 deg). The excellent agreement was obtained for the mScolio device, where the concordance correlation coefficient was 0.9381 (95% CI of 0.9076 ÷ 0.9588) and the interclass correlation coefficient was 0.9501 (95% CI of 0.9242 ÷ 0.9671). Conclusions: Tests showed excellent reliability and validity of ATR using the mScolio solution. Obtained results show excellent consistency between mScolio and the Brunnell scoliometer measurements.