Morphometric analysis of male and female inner ear structures in Caucasian population using three-dimensional modeling and oriented bounding box

Objectives: This study aims to determine the standard morphometric structure of male and female inner ear structures in the Caucasian population by analyzing computed tomography (CT) images of 130 people without hearing or balance complaints. Methods: Three-dimensional (3D) models of the semicircular canals (SC), vestibule, and cochlea were created using semi-automatic segmentation. Angles between SCs were calculated using oriented bounding boxes (OBB). Size, volume, radius of curvature, canal diameters, common crus dimensions, central bone island areas, and cochlear and vestibule volumes were measured. Results: Although significant deviations from 90° on a case-by-case basis were observed in SC pairs, no statistically significant deviation from orthogonality was detected. While there was no significant difference between SC angulations, there were significant gender differences between other inner ear morphometric measurements. Conclusions: This study has shown that reliable SC angulation measurements can be made on conventional CT images with the OBB method, which has not been used for this purpose before. Significant differences were found between inner ear morphometric measurements of Caucasian male and female populations.