Systematic method for morphological reconstruction of the semicircular canals using a fully automatic skeletonization process

We present a novel method to characterize the morphology of semicircular canals of the inner ear. Previous experimental works have a common nexus, the human-operator subjectivity. Although these methods are mostly automatic, they rely on a human decision to determine some particular anatomical posit...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cortés-Dominguez, I. (Iván)|||/items/8ed31af7-e026-4455-bb3b-c000e3d1d740, Fernández-Seara, M.A. (María Asunción)|||/items/1201e6f0-b040-432d-b6c3-5161216bff6d, Perez-Fernandez, N. (Nicolás)|||/items/f35b1b73-f2d0-4c4c-9a3f-c496e4dff4d4, Burguete-Mas, F.J. (Francisco Javier)|||/items/408b1397-b3d1-4939-a7f3-e673d3a80721
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Navarra
Repositorio:Dadun. Depósito Académico Digital de la Universidad de Navarra
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dadun.unav.edu:10171/62694
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10171/62694
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Semicircular canals
Inner ear
Skeletonization
Descripción
Sumario:We present a novel method to characterize the morphology of semicircular canals of the inner ear. Previous experimental works have a common nexus, the human-operator subjectivity. Although these methods are mostly automatic, they rely on a human decision to determine some particular anatomical positions. We implement a systematic analysis where there is no human subjectivity. Our approach is based on a specific magnetic resonance study done in a group of 20 volunteers. From the raw data, the proposed method defines the centerline of all three semicircular canals through a skeletonization process and computes the angle of the functional pair and other geometrical parameters. This approach allows us to assess the inter-operator effect on other methods. From our results, we conclude that, although an average geometry can be defined, the inner ear anatomy cannot be reduced to a single geometry as seen in previous experimental works. We observed a relevant variability of the geometrical parameters in our cohort of volunteers that hinders this usual simplification.