3D Modeling of Pelvic Organs and Pelvic Floor Muscles in Magnetic Resonance Images

In the recent years, high prevalence of pelvic floor dysfunctions has led to more and more research work focus on the biological and biomechanical behavior of the related muscles and their relationships with the other pelvic organs [1]. Magnetic resonance imaging, due to some important issues, such as safety and enhanced resolution of soft tissues, is a preferred imaging modality for those works. However, the information provided in each slice (2D image) discards the spatial continuity between the neighbored slices. Consequently, medical technicians cannot obtain an intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the imaging organs through the acquired 3D slice volumes. Accurate 3D models of pelvic organs, mainly of the pelvic floor muscles, are needed to assist a thorough scope on the structures in the pelvic cavity and are valuable for clinical diagnosis. The normal way to obtain 3D models from 3D slice volumes is to first sketch the boundaries of the different organs (or structures) in each 2D slice, and then use the sequential contours to build the surfaces. Nevertheless, the complex background in MR images of pelvic cavity should be carefully handled. Additionally, the influence of noise and partial volume effect (PVE) tend to blur the boundaries of organs and structures. Usually, this feature makes the segmentation mainly dependent on manual operations. There are some algorithms already proposed to segment certain pelvic structure