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Answers for Your Pain
When you hurt every day, you want more than guesses. You’d like to know what is wrong and what to do about it. For more than 75 years, most spine tests have captured still images of a moving problem. They show your back or neck at rest. They do not show how your spine behaves when you bend, twist, or turn, which is when many people feel the most pain.
Advanced Vertebral Motion Analysis (VMA®) is different. It studies your spine as it moves, then measures how each bone slides and tilts. It helps your care team see problems that regular X-rays and MRIs often miss, especially injuries to the ligaments that stabilize your spine.
When Symptoms Persist but Imaging Falls Short
Many people hear some version of “your scan looks fine” while they still have:
- Ongoing neck or back pain
- Pain that worsens when you move
- Tingling, numbness, or weakness into the arms or legs
- Headaches after a crash or fall
Standard X-rays and MRIs look for fractures, disc problems, and obvious damage. They are helpful, but they are static tests. They look at your spine in a still, supported position. A common source of ongoing pain is spinal instability. This happens when ligaments or discs are damaged so the bones in your spine move more than they should. That extra motion can irritate joints and nerves and speed up wear and tear. Static tests often do not show this. If your pain shows up with movement, you need a test that looks at movement. That is what VMA does.
Why Motion Matters
Your spine is built to move. You bend to tie your shoes. You twist to look over your shoulder. You reach, carry, and turn all day.
If the ligaments that guide and limit that motion are stretched or torn, your spine can:
- Shift too far forward or backward.
- Tilt more than it should between levels.
- Load joints and discs in ways they were not meant to handle.
These changes often show up only while you are in motion. A still picture at the start or end of a bend can miss what happens in between. Studies show that motion-based testing can pick up instability that static X-rays miss in a significant share of cases.