Automated landmark-based mid-sagittal plane: reliability for 3-dimensional mandibular asymmetry assessment on head CT...

The determination of the mid-sagittal plane (MSP) on three-dimensional (3D) head imaging is key to the assessment of facial asymmetry. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability of an automated landmark-based MSP to quantify mandibular asymmetry on head computed tomography (CT) scans.

A dataset of 368 CT scans, including orthognathic surgery patients, was automatically annotated with 3D cephalometric landmarks via a previously published deep learning-based method. Five of these landmarks were used to automatically construct an MSP orthogonal to the Frankfurt horizontal plane. The reliability of automatic MSP construction was compared with the reliability of manual MSP construction based on 6 manual localizations by 3 experienced operators on 19 randomly selected CT scans. The mandibular asymmetry of the 368 CT scans with respect to the MSP was calculated and compared with clinical expert judgment.

The construction of the MSP was found to be highly reliable, both manually and automatically. The manual reproducibility 95% limit of agreement was less than 1 mm for -y translation and less than 1.1° for -x and -z rotation, and the automatic measurement lied within the confidence interval of the manual method. The automatic MSP construction was shown to be clinically relevant, with the mandibular asymmetry measures being consistent with the expertly assessed levels of asymmetry.

The proposed automatic landmark-based MSP construction was found to be as reliable as manual construction and clinically relevant in assessing the mandibular asymmetry of 368 head CT scans.

Once implemented in a clinical software, fully automated landmark-based MSP construction could be clinically used to assess mandibular asymmetry on head CT scans.