Cross-validation of TRACE and eTRACE (Formetric TRACE) for aesthetics evaluation in scoliosis patients

Introduction The aesthetic issue is one of the main aim in the treatment of Idiopathic Scoliosis (IS) as defined by SOSORT. TRACE is a tool, recently developed, which standardize the subjective medical experts evaluation and has shown a fair sensitivity and repeatability in the everyday clinical setting for the evaluation of aesthetics in IS patients. Recently, it was also successfully investigated the possibility to introduce a set of objectives aesthetic parameters obtained by 3D reconstruction of the shape of the back of IS patients through surface topography by Formetric (eTRACE). Since there is no gold-standard for aesthetic evaluation of IS, a correlation between two existing measures allow to validate them as measurements tool of the same underlying physiological phenomenon. Our aim was to evaluate if there was a correlation between TRACE and e-TRACE.