Whole-body pregnant woman modeling by digital geometry processing with detailed uterofetal unit based on medical images

Abstract

Abstract-Anatomical models of pregnant women are used in several applications, such as numerical dosimetry, to assess the potential effects of electromagnetic fields on biological tissues, or medical simulation. Recent advances in medical imaging have enabled the generation of realistic and detailed models of human beings. The construction of pregnant woman models remains a complex task, since it is not possible to acquire whole-body images. Only few models have been developed up to now, and they all present some limitations regarding the representation of anatomical variability of the fetus shape and position over the entire gestation. This paper describes a complete methodology that intends to automate each step of the construction of pregnant women models. The proposed approach relies on the segmentation of 3-D ultrasonic and 3-D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, and on dedicated computer graphics tools. The lack of complete anatomical information for the mother in image data is compensated, in an original way, by merging the available information with a synthetic woman model, deformed to match the image-based information. A set of models anatomically validated by clinical experts is presented. They include detailed information on uterofetal units and cover different gestational stages with various fetal positions.

Automatic Segmentation of Antenatal 3-D Ultrasound Images

“…In this context, we exploited four 3DUS cases to generate detailed anatomical models used to investigate the influence of electromagnetic fields on the fetus during pregnancy (see [45] and [46] for details). Surfacic models of the uterus and its content were built and embedded within a synthetic woman model.…”

Development of computational pregnant female and fetus models and assessment of radiation dose from positron-emitting tracers

“…Fetal dose from 18 F-FDG in clinical scans 18 F-FDG is the workhorse of PET scanning and the most commonly used PET tracer in oncology. The diagnosis of cancer using FDG-PET during pregnancy is relatively rare.…”

“…In this work, the Ga-DOTANOC are commonly used for PET imaging of pheochromocytoma in pregnant patients, we observed that 18 F-FDOPA produces the highest fetal effective dose. Figure 8 compares the effective doses of the fetus and pregnant women from 18 F-FDG and 68 Ga-DOTANOC. For the pregnant female, the effective dose changes slightly during the whole gestation period while the fetal effective doses are significantly higher at the 8th and 10th weeks of pregnancy than the other gestation periods.…”

“…The pregnant female phantom series of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) (12th, 24th, and 36th weeks of gestation) [17], the Fetal and Mother Numerical Models (FEMONUM) developed by Telecom ParisTech (8th, 10th, 26th, 30th, and 35th weeks of gestation) [18], the Katja phantom [19] (24th week of gestation), as well as the voxel newborn model [20] of Helmholtz Zentrum München were used in this work to construct new series of fetal/pregnant female models [21]. The FEMONUM utero-fetus models at the 8th and 10th weeks of gestation were constructed based on medical images acquired using 3-D ultrasound imaging while the FEMONUM utero-fetus models of the 26th, 30th, and 35th weeks of gestation were constructed using 3-D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data.…”

Automatic Fetal Organs Detection and Approximation in Ultrasound Image

“…Bibin et al focused on modelling pregnant women and fetus on 3D ultrasound images [7]. Nadeau et al proposed ultrasound intensity-based visual servoing improvement using 2D bi-plane probe for tracking and positioning task framework [9].…”