UROKIN: A Novel Software for Kinematic Analysis of Urogenital Motion Using Transperineal Ultrasound Imaging

Abstract

Dynamic transperineal ultrasound (TPUS) video allows for kinematic analysis of urogenital morphology and mobility, however, measures are often limited to peak displacements of anatomical landmarks and are vulnerable to error incurred by probe rotation during imaging. This thesis aimed to (1) develop an algorithm to calculate kinematic curves of urogenital landmark motion from TPUS video and to (2) investigate the error incurred in these kinematic measures due to in-plane ultrasound probe rotation. UROKIN, a semi-automated software, was developed and, as a proof of concept, was used to identify differences in urogenital kinematics during pelvic floor muscle maximum voluntary contractions between women with and without stress urinary incontinence. A mathematical model revealed that the error incurred by TPUS probe rotation in the x- (anterior-posterior) and y- (cranial-caudal) directions, was a factor of: r, the radius of rotation; Ɵ, the in-plane angular probe rotation; and α, the angular deviation between the anatomical planes and the coordinate system in which error was calculated. As an absolute measure, the error incurred by in-plane probe rotation is reduced to a factor of only r and Ɵ. Moving forward, UROKIN must be adapted to include findings from (1), and must be tested for validity and reliability.