The Prevention of Mechanical Birth Trauma by Means of Computer Aided Simulation of Delivery by Means of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Finite Element Analysis

Anatomic disproportion gains an increasing interest in obstetrics. Imaging procedures (radiologic pelvimetry, computed or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) fail to reflect the dynamics of delivery including deformations of the birth channel as well as of fetal structures. To validate findings of imaging procedures in this respect a method has been developed to perform a dynamic, biomechanical postprocessing of the static informations obtained from MRI. Using an especially developped software MRI pixel matrices of maternal pelvis and fetal head were color-coded and — according to the principle of same density — line data were created. After sectional attribution of the resulting polygones a three-dimensional mesh of so called Finite elements (FE) was created, which then can be used for deformation analysis. Fetal head was then moved through the birth channel by means of computed simulation. This allows not only ongoing deformations to be visualized but also resulting forces to be calculated for at any time of the delivery process for any point of the anatomical model. Performing these simulations assuming various anatomic and physiologic conditions an obstetrical-biomechanical data basis could be obtained, that was implemented in a PC-based expert system. This allows interpretation of pelvimetric data with regard to birth dynamics.