3D T2w fetal body MRI: automated organ volumetry, growth charts and population-averaged atlas

Alena U. Uus, Megan Hall, Irina Grigorescu, Carla Avena Zampieri, Alexia Egloff Collado, Kelly Payette, Jacqueline Matthew, Vanessa Kyriakopoulou, Joseph V. Hajnal, Jana Hutter, Mary A. Rutherford, Maria Deprez, Lisa Story
2023 · doi:10.1101/2023.05.31.23290751
preprint OA: gold CC-BY-4.0
📄 Open PDF View at publisher

Abstract

ABSTRACT Structural fetal body MRI provides true 3D information required for volumetry of fetal organs. However, current clinical and research practice primarily relies on manual slice-wise segmentation of raw T2-weighted stacks, which is time consuming, subject to inter- and intra-observer bias and affected by motion-corruption. Furthermore, there are no existing standard guidelines defining a universal approach to parcellation of fetal organs. This work produces the first parcellation protocol of the fetal body organs for motion-corrected 3D fetal body MRI. It includes 10 organ ROIs relevant to fetal quantitative volumetry studies. We also introduce the first population-averaged T2w MRI atlas of the fetal body. The protocol was used as a basis for training of a neural network for automated organ segmentation. It showed robust performance for different gestational ages. This solution minimises the need for manual editing and significantly reduces time. The general feasibility of the proposed pipeline was also assessed by analysis of organ growth charts created from automated parcellations of 91 normal control 3T MRI datasets that showed expected increase in volumetry during 22-38 weeks gestational age range. In addition, the results of comparison between 60 normal and 12 fetal growth restriction datasets revealed significant differences in organ volumes.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

References (30)

Source provenance

crossref
last seen: 2026-09-17T06:32:43.587098+00:00
europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-19T01:45:01.086888+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-21T02:00:01.467718+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0