Volumetric quantification in ovarian pathology using abdomino-pelvic computed tomography

Pathological ovary is categorized into cystic tumors, solid tumors and mixed, according to the content of the affected ovary. Accordingly, the degree of benignity or malignity thereof is established. The imaging study for the preliminary morphological assessment of PO is ultrasound, in its pelvic and transvaginal modalities, for which well-established criteria are available. Once the ultrasound findings suggest malignancy, complementary studies such as abdominal-pelvic tomography images and tumor markers are requested. This type of images has challenging problems called noise, artifacts and low contrast. In this paper, in order to address these problems, a computational technique is proposed to characterize a pathological ovary. To do this, a thresholding and the median and gradient magnitude filters are applied, preliminarily, to complete the preprocessing stage. Then, during the segmentation, the algorithm of region growing is used to extract the three-dimensional morphology of the pathological ovary. Using this morphology, the volume of the pathological ovary is calculated and it allows selecting the surgical-medical behavior to approach this kind of ovary. The validation of the proposed technique indicates that the results are promising. This technique can be useful in the detection and monitoring the diseases linked to pathological ovary.