Weight drop impact system and its output signal analysis for inducing large animal spinal cord injury model.

Abstract

Weight drop style impact systems can be used as a tool to induce the acute spinal cord injury (SCI) in large animals. We introduce our cost-effective impact system for the SCI modeling without using an expensive high speed camera and a vision system. And the practical output signals obtained in porcine in-vivo experiments using our system have been analyzed to check the effects of surrounding bones, tissues, and bleedings over the impacting target position in the spinal cord. By analyzing the output signals, the abnormal impact results hindered by the surrounding structures could have been separated from the normally impacted ones.