Any Physical Therapists, Chiropractors or Doctors in the house? Spinal movement question for an...

I am looking for someone with accurate medical knowledge of the spine.

Currently I am working on a major 6-month senior design project. Our customer is a professor at a local college in the PT department. One of there diagnostic tools is a motion capture system that they use to track the movements of their patients, as well as for research. My team has been asked to develop a mechanical spine platform with 3 movable sections (lower and upper lumbar, thoracic) which has accurate spinal movement in 3 planes.

They will set this platform up into physically measurable positions, then use the motion capture system to take "snapshots". By doing this they will be able to verify that the computerized motion capture readings are accurate to the physical spine positions. 

The problem that we have at the moment is we are completely unfamiliar with the way spinal movements are measured and recorded in the medical world. We were supposed to meet with the customer today, but she called off the meeting due to a conflict. The team has a bunch of ideas, but several of them are not practical depending on the measurement requirements. We need to move forward with the design, and this lack of knowledge is holding us up. If you have medical knowledge of the spine, it would likely help to have a quick chat with you, and the help would be greatly appreciated.

Kyle, send a PM/email to jdisteffa, DP and Baja.  Between those guys you should get some very good ideas.  They are not always active this time of year, so an email would work better than hoping they will see this thread.

Good luck.

Thanks Tom, I knew we had a few around...