Low skeletal muscle mass (sarcopenia) is an important prognostic risk factor for the outcome of a variety of cancer types. The current study investigated whether skeletal muscle area (SMA), psoas area (PA) and psoas major volume (PV) are associated with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (OC). A total of 92 OC patients were enrolled in the present study. Pre-treatment with SMA and PA was assessed using computed tomography (CT) and PV was calculated using a three-dimensional-CT (3D-CT). The clinical factors associated with sarcopenia and prognosis were retrospectively evaluated. For all patients, the median PFS and OS were 19 and 32 months, respectively. Patients exhibiting lower PV (<195.6 cm3) had significantly poorer PFS and OS compared with patients exhibiting higher PV (≥195.6 cm3; P=0.018 and P=0.006), while those with low SMA (<92.92 cm2) had significantly worse OS than patients with higher SMA (≥92.92 cm2; P=0.030). PV was also demonstrated to be superior to SMA and PA in prognosis prediction. PV by 3D-CT can serve as an indicator of poor prognosis in patients with OC.