Design, Development and Validation of a Lab VIEW-Based Spinal Mobilizer for Treating Back Pain
Patrick So, Vijay Vaidyanathan, Ali Nouri, Shrawan Kumar, Bobby Grimes, Nikita Satish

Abstract
Lower back afflicts 85% of Americans and is the leading cause of disability in Americans, ages 45 and under. Musculoskeletal pain, arthritis, and back pain produced a total of 10.7 hours of lost productive time. This decrease in productivity leads to an overall cost of $560-$635 billion annually. There is a real need for development of devices that can help treat back pain and enable them to lead productive lives. To this end, a spinal mobilizer was developed and tested at the University of North Texas. The spinal mobilizer was interfaced to LabVIEW, using a data acquisition board. The spinal mobilizer was tested successfully on patients for specific loads. The Therapeutic Spinal Mobilizer passed the tests for reliability, validity, and effectiveness, making it quite beneficial to both patients with spinal issues and physical therapists.

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