Three-dimensional appearance of the lips muscles with three-dimensional isotropic MRI: in vivo study.
BACKGROUND
Our knowledge of facial muscles is based primarily on atlases and cadaveric studies. This study describes a non-invasive in vivo method (3D MRI) for segmenting and reconstructing facial muscles in a three-dimensional fashion.


METHODS
Three-dimensional (3D), T1-weighted, 3 Tesla, isotropic MRI was applied to a subject. One observer performed semi-automatic segmentation using the Editor module from the 3D Slicer software (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA), version 3.2.


RESULTS
We were able to successfully outline and three-dimensionally reconstruct the following facial muscles: pars labialis orbicularis oris, m. levatro labii superioris alaeque nasi, m. levator labii superioris, m. zygomaticus major and minor, m. depressor anguli oris, m. depressor labii inferioris, m. mentalis, m. buccinator, and m. orbicularis oculi.


CONCLUSIONS
3D reconstruction of the lip muscles should be taken into consideration in order to improve the accuracy and individualization of existing 3D facial soft tissue models. More studies are needed to further develop efficient methods for segmentation in this field.
Olszewski
Raphael
R
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Cliniques Universitaires Saint Luc, Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium. raphael.olszewski@uclouvain.be
Liu
Y
Y
Duprez
T
T
Xu
T M
TM
Reychler
H
H
D002102:Cadaver; D005152:Facial Muscles / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008046:Lip / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results