We have demonstrated that better visualization for endoscopic surgery can be achieved through our novel MAE. The scope may bring about a paradigm shift in the field of minimally invasive surgery by providing more freedom in viewpoint selection, enabling surgeons to perform more elaborate procedures in minimally invasive settings.
Recently, in vivo visualization of the cochlea and the smaller structures inside of it has been achieved by optical coherence tomography (OCT). This makes it possible to use OCT imaging for diagnosis of diseases such as Meniere's disease through measuring the degree of endolymphatic hydrops. To this end, we present a novel method for 3D segmentation of these cochlear OCT images that is based on superpixels and diffusion maps. The method takes as input grayscale volumetric OCT images and outputs a binary image with the segmented cochlea. We show that the proposed method is suitable for segmenting the data for visualization as well as for preprocessing the data for future automated grading of endolymphatic hydrops.
Endolymphatic hydrops is a disorder in which an excessive amount of endolymph uid causes an increase in the pressure of the endolymphatic system of the inner ear. In cochlea, endolymphatic hydrops can cause stretching in the scala media, a tubular construction that, along with two other similar structures, the scala vestibuli and scala tympani, runs through the cochlea from the base to the top. Visualizing the enlargement of the scala media has traditionally been done by histological study of tissue sections, and the degree can be calculated by comparing the ratio of the area of the scala media to the combined total area of the three compartments. However, this requires the obtainment of tissue samples, and thus is not suited for in vivo measurements, and is a labor intensive process in general. Imaging modalities that have been used to measure endolymphatic hydrops include MRI, μMRI and μCT. Recently, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been applied for visualizing cochlea of mice in vivo. However, just visually discriminating between healthy and af icted cochlea, and judging the degree of af iction can be dif cult. Thus, we aim to establish a new technique for estimating the degree of enlargement of the scala media. We measured two healthy and two diseased cochlea using conventional area calculation, as well as our method, and present results that show that our technique correlates with established standards for measuring the degree of endolymphatic hydrops in cochlea (R = 0.977, p = 0.5 × 10
−7).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.