Qi Zhang · 张琦EN中文

Research

Interpretable Vertebral Fracture Assessment

Pseudo-healthy vertebral synthesis and relative height-loss measurement for quantitative CT-based compression-fracture assessment.

HealthiVert-GAN artwork showing pseudo-healthy vertebra synthesis and height-loss measurement

Clinical motivation

Compression-fracture grading is difficult when no pre-fracture reference is available and deformity varies across the vertebral body.

Technical challenges

  • A pre-fracture CT reference is normally unavailable for an injured vertebra.
  • Compression can differ across anterior, middle, and posterior regions of the vertebral body.
  • A grading result is more useful when it can be traced to measurable shape change.

Research progression

  1. Coarse-to-fine pseudo-healthy vertebral synthesis
  2. Anatomy-informed restoration using adjacent vertebrae
  3. Relative height-loss mapping and compression-fracture grading

Current directions

  • Robust height-loss measurement across CT acquisition settings
  • Closer alignment between quantitative maps and clinical review
  • Evaluation of model failure cases and anatomical plausibility

Related publications

Representative publications

2025 · Published

HealthiVert-GAN: A Novel Framework of Pseudo-Healthy Vertebral Image Synthesis for Interpretable Compression Fracture Grading

Publication recordPaperCode