A system for analyzing intraoperative B-Mode ultrasound scans of the liver

In this article, a system for automatic analysis of intraoperative B-Mode ultrasound images of the liver is presented. The system is part of an assistance system for open liver surgery. It supports 3D-ultrasound imaging and automatic segmentation of vessel structures in the intraoperative ultrasound images. With this segmentation results, an ultrasound based 3D-model of the vascular structure is extracted and manually registered to a preoperative CT- based model. Anatomical landmarks like bifurcations of vessels are automatically extracted in the ultrasound-based model and will be used for an automatic registration process in further developments.