Ear Contouring

The ear contouring demonstration. The demonstration consists of two seperate drawing boards.

  1. A demonstration contouring where you can login but cant edit the contours.
  2. A live board below where you can practice the contouring yourself.

The service is provided courtesy of Scribblar.com. You can invite others to contour with yourself in the 2nd room as well as chat with them while contouring. Please add all your questions, comments and additions in the comments section below.


Demo contouring done : You cant edit this contouring.

Login using any name you want (preferably your wikidot user name or your real name). No password is required.
This room will allow you to see the contours in 10 images. Select the page number for the drop down menu to navigate between image slices.


Contouring practice workstation. You can use the pencil tool to contour the structures you want in the images below for practice. Please dont delete the images so that others can use them too.


Contouring guide for those who like to read text

  1. Typical inner and middle ear structures will be visible for 3 - 4 slices if you have a slice thickness of 3 mm. If you have a slice thickness of anything more than 5 mm dont expect to do much of ear contouring.
  2. The inner ear structures contoured are the vestibular apparatus and the cochlea. The middle ear is contoured as a single structure.
  3. It is important to select the bone window prior to the contouring. ln eclipse you can fiddle around with the window width/ level slider but the easiest is the right click on the width level selector bar that appears on the right while simultaneously pressing CTRL (the control key) and selecting the vertebrae preset.
  4. For those interested the window width is 3000 to 4000 and level of 400 to 800 gives you the optimum setting
  5. Middle ear contouring:
    1. Follow the external ear canal and in its medial most portion you will see two very small bony prominences that mark the position of the tympanic membrane
    2. The anterior, posterior and medial walls of the middle ear cavity will be the interface between the air and the bone in the petrous part of the temporal bone.
    3. The usual volume is 0.6 cc for the middle ear contoured this way.
  6. Inner ear contouring:
    1. First identify the internal auditory meatus in the petrous part of the temporal bone.
    2. The vestibular apparatus is situated posterior and lateral to the internal auditory meatus.
    3. The cochlea is situated medial and anterior to the meatus.
    4. Typically the apparatus appears as round to semicircular lucencies.
    5. Usual volume if contoured rigrously will be around 0.4 cc for the vestibular apparatus and 0.15 cc for the cochlea.
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