Digitized virtual liver and hepatic surgery after filling hepatic duct systems

    ZHOU Wuª²Yi, FANG Chiª²Hua, HUANG Liª²Wei, ZHOU Zeª²Min, YANG Jian, LIU Xu, WANG Baoª²Liang, ZHONG Shiª²Zheng

    Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510282, China, Department of Computer and Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China, Institute of Clinical Anatomy, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To study the digitized virtual liver and hepatic surgery after filling hepatic duct systems. METHODS: Four kinds of intrahepatic ducts were perfused with different filling material ex vivo respectively. And then the samples were used to be frozen, embedded and sliced to obtain serial sectional images. The whole series of hepatic images was employed to reconstruct a 3 dimensional (3D) liver. After the image registration of the tissue sections, the image information of liver parenchyma, hepatic veins, bile duct and cholecyst was obtained by image segmentation, followed by the 3D reconstruction using Visualization ToolKit (VTK) to construct a 3D morphological model of the liver surface and intrahepatic structures. The virtual liver could also be resected at any angle to observe the structure of the resection surface. Furthermore, a Windows PCª²based 3D visualized demonstration system and Windows operation system of liver were developed. RESULTS: Total 910 consecutive sectional images of liver were taken. Hepatic arteries, inferior cava veins/hepatic veins, portal veins and biliary ducts were shown with red, blue, green, and yellow colors, respectively. This demostration system of liver provided a graphic user interface to rotate and scale the 3D liver to observe 3D morphological features of the liver and its duct systems by setting the pellucidit and color. A virtual liver simulation system for resection with primary function was established. CONCLUSION: The technique of perfusion of hepatic ducts may be beneficial to identification of intrahepatic structure. And research on digitized virtual liver and virtual hepatic surgery may be beneficial to the development of the hepatic anatomy and surgery. ......