Fig. 2

Curve generation from a 3D model. The landmarks are labeled as follows: the posterior endplate valley (PEV, the blue arrow), the intersection of two laminae (red arrow), the lateral tips of the bilateral uncinate processes (green arrows), and the midpoint of the posterior rim of the inferior endplate (pink arrow) (a, b). The reference planes that were generated are shown (c, d). The result of curve generation performed by intersecting the middle three reference planes with the vertebral body is shown (e, f)