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Article History

Received: 21 December 2025

Accepted: 23 June 2026

First Online: 29 June 2026

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Ethics Review Committee of the Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University (XYFY2024-KL585-01) for the use of human CT imaging data. The healthy adult volunteer provided written informed consent. The goat cervical spine specimens were obtained post-mortem from a licensed commercial slaughterhouse. The animals were slaughtered by trained slaughterhouse personnel using standard commercial food processing methods (stunning followed by exsanguination) in accordance with local regulations for food animal slaughter. As no experimental procedures were performed on live animals and all specimens were acquired from animals slaughtered solely for commercial food purposes unrelated to this research, ethical approval for animal experimentation was not required for this study, consistent with institutional and national guidelines.

Consent for publication: Not applicable.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.