What does Anterior Osteophytes mean?

Answer:
Radiologists often examine X-rays of cervical, thoracic and lumbar vertebrae for determining the presence of steoarthritis and osteoporosis. For individual vertebra assessment, the boundary increasingly digresses from the general rectangular shape as the vertebra becomes less normal in appearance. For an abnormal vertebra, bony growths (鈥榦steophytes鈥? may appear at the vertebral corners, resulting in a change in the vertebra鈥檚 shape. Image processing techniques are presented for computing size-invariant, convex hull-based features to highlight anterior osteophytes. Feature evaluation of 714 lumbar spine vertebrae using a multi-layer perceptron yielded normal and abnormal average correct discrimination of 90.5 and 86.6%, respectively.

---

Anterior cervical osteophytes are common bony growths on the front of the spine. Most patients have no symptoms from the osteophytes. But occasionally, these small bony lumps will push against the back of the throat and make swallowing difficult. The condition is usually evaluated and treated by physicians in the department of Otorhinolaryngology and/or a speech-language pathologist.Since the cervical osteophytes are behind the throat, an external opening through the skin is required. The throat is moved forward, and the bony bumps are removed. The procedure requires general anesthesia and an overnight stay in the hospital. Complications are rare. Hope this helps.

---