Abstract
Liver tumor, one of the most wide-spread diseases, has a very high mortality in China. To improve success rates of liver
surgeries and life qualities of such patients, we implement an interactive liver surgery planning system based on contrastenhanced
liver CT images. The system consists of five modules: pre-processing, segmentation, modeling, quantitative
analysis and surgery simulation. The Graph Cuts method is utilized to automatically segment the liver based on an
anatomical prior knowledge that liver is the biggest organ and has almost homogeneous gray value. The system supports
users to build patient-specific liver segment and sub-segment models using interactive portal vein branch labeling, and to
perform anatomical resection simulation. It also provides several tools to simulate atypical resection, including resection
plane, sphere and curved surface. To match actual surgery resections well and simulate the process flexibly, we extend
our work to develop a virtual scalpel model and simulate the scalpel movement in the hepatic tissue using multi-plane
continuous resection. In addition, the quantitative analysis module makes it possible to assess the risk of a liver surgery.
The preliminary results show that the system has the potential to offer an accurate 3D delineation of the liver anatomy, as
well as the tumors' location in relation to vessels, and to facilitate liver resection surgeries. Furthermore, we are testing
the system in a full-scale clinical trial.
