European researchers have developed a virtual liver intended to improve the treatment of patients with diseases such as liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver.
The virtual liver is based on software that can generate a three-dimensional image of a patient’s liver and allow it to be shared by experts in different locations.
The software provides doctors with detailed information on the shape of the patient’s liver and the location of blood vessels in the organ. These details should lead to an increase in the number of patients who are considered eligible for surgery and help doctors to plan operations.
‘Thanks to the 3D modelling, the future of liver surgery has gained more precision through accurate definition of the liver’s blood vessels,’ commented Professor Luc Soler of the Institut de Recherche contre les Cancers de l’Appareil Digestif in France.
As well as providing doctors with an important new diagnostic tool, the software has also shed new light on the way the liver is segmented. Until now, liver surgery has been based on a model of the liver dating from 1957.
The 3D modelling software reveals that in fact up to 50% of patients have a liver structure that differs markedly from that of the old model.
The initial work was carried out in the framework of the Eureka project Odysseus. Eureka promotes international, market-oriented research.
The virtual liver is now being developed with further EU funding under the passport (‘patient specific simulation and preoperative realistic training for liver surgery’) project. Passport is €3.6m programme funded under the ICT FP7 Framework Programme.
Surgery represents a major tool in the treatment of these diseases, in which the objective is to remove diseased tissue. Currently, doctors use medical images of the liver to decide which patients have enough healthy liver tissue to undergo surgery.
However, interpreting these 2D images is rather difficult, as is their examination and analysis with other experts who are not present in person.
In addition to the virtual patient modelling tools which enable a pre-operative assessment to be carried out, Diagnosis and Virtual Planning software allows tools to be positioned within 3D images that can be reconstructed.
Two surgical simulators allow surgeons to practice the planned surgery on the virtual liver before operating on the patient. The simulators mimic the texture and resistance of liver tissue, and users comment that it is hard to tell the difference between the simulator images and photographs of surgery. The simulators can also be used to train surgeons.
Crucially, a communication system called Argonaute permits users in different locations to interact and offer advice based on the images at the same time.
The project partners, come from France, Germany and Norway, and are now working to bring their new technologies to the market and implement their new system in hospitals.
The work which began in Odysseus is now continuing through the Passport project, which will add biological, mechanical, dynamic and appearance information to the geometric model developed by Odysseus.
The project partners have already made improvements to the software and made it freely available on the Internet.
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