Development of a virtual reality system for Hepatocellular Carcinoma pre-surgical planning

Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) is the most primary liver tumor and one of the most common cancers worldwide, particularly in developing countries. Various treatment options are available to treat HCC with various degrees of success rate and mortality. Studies done by researchers have shown that pre-surgical planning tools aid surgeons in planning surgery procedures for HCC as well as increasing post-surgery survival rate. Previously, pre-surgical planning was done based on medical images acquired using medical imaging devices such as Computer Tomography (CT), X-Ray, Ultrasound, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Surgeons will need to examine the medical images carefully, and picturing a 3D liver model using imagination. This process is very time consuming, and anatomical variations of tumors might lead to suboptimal treatment strategy decision. This project focuses on the application of virtual reality technology in HCC pre-surgical planning. One of many deployments of virtual reality in pre-surgical planning is to display a virtual 3D liver model which resembles patient´s liver. It is built by taking segmented 2D axial slices of patient´s liver as input. The operation is done by using surface extraction technique. The product of surface extraction is a virtual 3D mesh, which is consisted of a group of points recorded in their respective three dimensional coordinates. These points are mapped to graphic primitives by graphic renderer. Interaction control with the 3D model is done by using computer hardware interface devices such as mouse, keyboard, joystick or pen input devices.