Accurate detection of 3D pelvic-floor-muscle strength for reforming clinical diagnosis and treatment of women’s pelvic floor dysfunction

Accurate quantitative mapping of three-dimensional (3D) pelvic-floor-muscle (PFM) strength distributions bears great clinical significance for early diagnosis and individualized precision physiotherapeutic treatment of female pelvic-floor dysfunction (PFD). However, conventional clinical PFM assessment methods merely assess a rough and aggregate PFM strength across the entire vaginal muscular canal, substantially hindering the evolution of PFD diagnostic methodologies and therapeutic interventions. Here, precise quantification of complex 3D PFM-strength distributions has been achieved by developing a portable multi-channel dynamic PFM-pressure measurement system. Clinical verification corroborates the system’s superiority in PFM-strength detection sensitivity and 3D spatial resolution, enabling localization of individualized PFM functional defects and facilitating the formulation of tailored intervention protocols. Significantly, the acquired high-precision 3D PFM-strength distributions allow the identification of diverse subclinical muscular abnormalities that cannot be captured via conventional PFM assessment tools, thereby establishing visualized biomechanical evidence to support early PFD diagnosis and targeted physical rehabilitation. Complemented by the ergonomic comfort, wide patient adaptability, and artifact-insensitive measurement stability and reliability endowed with the novel vaginal probe design, this exploratory proof-of-concept investigation paves the way for a paradigm revolution in PFM pathological research and promotes the transformation of clinical pelvic-floor medicine from empirical medicine to data-driven precision medicine.