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Patient-specific estimation of detailed cochlear shape from clinical CT images

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

A personalized estimation of the cochlear shape can be used to create computational anatomical models to aid cochlear implant (CI) surgery and CI audio processor programming ultimately resulting in improved hearing restoration. The purpose of this work is to develop and test a method for estimation of the detailed patient-specific cochlear shape from CT images.

Methods

From a collection of temporal bone \(\mu \)CT images, we build a cochlear statistical deformation model (SDM), which is a description of how a human cochlea deforms to represent the observed anatomical variability. The model is used for regularization of a non-rigid image registration procedure between a patient CT scan and a \(\mu \)CT image, allowing us to estimate the detailed patient-specific cochlear shape.

Results

We test the accuracy and precision of the predicted cochlear shape using both \(\mu \)CT and CT images. The evaluation is based on classic generic metrics, where we achieve competitive accuracy with the state-of-the-art methods for the task. Additionally, we expand the evaluation with a few anatomically specific scores.

Conclusions

The paper presents the process of building and using the SDM of the cochlea. Compared to current best practice, we demonstrate competitive performance and some useful properties of our method.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to HEAR-EU results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Frame Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No. 304857.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    H. Martin Kjer, Jens Fagertun & Rasmus R. Paulsen

  2. ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Wilhelm Wimmer, Nicolas Gerber & Stefan Weber

  3. Alma IT Systems, Barcelona, Spain

    Sergio Vera

  4. Institute for Surgical Technology and Biomechanics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Livia Barazzetti & Mauricio Reyes

  5. Department of Information and Communication Technologies, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Nerea Mangado, Mario Ceresa, Gemma Piella & Miguel Ángel González Ballester

  6. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany

    Thomas Stark

  7. Scanco Medical AG, Brüttisellen, Switzerland

    Martin Stauber

  8. Department of ENT, Head and Neck Surgery, Inselspital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Marco Caversaccio

  9. Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

    Miguel Ángel González Ballester

Authors
  1. H. Martin Kjer
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  2. Jens Fagertun
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  3. Wilhelm Wimmer
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  4. Nicolas Gerber
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  5. Sergio Vera
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  6. Livia Barazzetti
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  7. Nerea Mangado
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  8. Mario Ceresa
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  9. Gemma Piella
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  10. Thomas Stark
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  11. Martin Stauber
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  12. Mauricio Reyes
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  13. Stefan Weber
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  14. Marco Caversaccio
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  15. Miguel Ángel González Ballester
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  16. Rasmus R. Paulsen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to H. Martin Kjer.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. This articles does not contain patient data.

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Cite this article

Kjer, H.M., Fagertun, J., Wimmer, W. et al. Patient-specific estimation of detailed cochlear shape from clinical CT images. Int J CARS 13, 389–396 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-017-1701-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-017-1701-7

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