Three-Dimensional Segmentation of Equine Paranasal Sinuses in Multidetector Computed Tomography Datasets: Preliminary Morphometric Assessment Assisted with Clustering Analysis

Abstract

The paranasal sinuses, a bilaterally symmetrical system of eight air-filled cavities, represent one of the most complex parts of the equine body. This study aimed to extract morphometric measures from computed tomography (CT) images of the equine head and to implement a clustering analysis for the computer-aided identification of age-related variations. Heads of 18 cadaver horses, aged 2–25 years, were CT-imaged and segmented to extract their volume, surface area, and relative density from the frontal sinus (FS), dorsal conchal sinus (DCS), ventral conchal sinus (VCS), rostral maxillary sinus (RMS), caudal maxillary sinus (CMS), sphenoid sinus (SS), palatine sinus (PS), and middle conchal sinus (MCS). Data were grouped into young, middle-aged, and old horse groups and clustered using the K-means clustering algorithm. Morphometric measurements varied according to the sinus position and age of the horses but not the body side. The volume and surface area of the VCS, RMS, and CMS increased with the age of the horses. With accuracy values of 0.72 for RMS, 0.67 for CMS, and 0.31 for VCS, the possibility of the age-related clustering of CT-based 3D images of equine paranasal sinuses was confirmed for RMS and CMS but disproved for VCS.