Temporal Bone Structure Segmentation by a Team of Otolaryngologists

A team of otolaryngologists needed to create a temporal bone structure segmentation. The following temporal bone structures needed to be marked for 3D printing and further research: the carotid arteries, facial nerves, inner ear (cochlea, vestibule, semicircular canals), ossicles, and sigmoid sinuses. To complete this task, 500 CT scans had to be annotated. Each structure had to receive a different label and color
for multiclass segmentation.

The biggest challenge was to segment structures in poor quality CT scans. Poor quality resulted in the absence of clear boundaries between the cranial dura mater and sigmoid sinuses in the images to segment the sigmoid sinuses, making the process longer and more complicated. As the volume of scans was large and the deadlines were tight, the team could not afford to label each CT scan for hours. They had to find a solution to process the scans faster and with high accuracy.

Mindy Support involved three otolaryngologists with 3+ years of medical experience each and provided one dedicated project manager.

For this particular case, we decided that 3D Slicer was the most suitable tool for 3D segmentation. 3D Slicer is a software platform for the analysis (including registration and interactive segmentation) and visualization (including volume rendering) of medical images and for research in image guided therapy. The tool supports multimodality imaging including MRI, CT scans, and nuclear medicine, and microscopy.