Computer-Aided Minimally Invasive Liver Surgery

Purpose and goal

The project´s aim has been to develop new technology solutions for requirements within pre-operative planning and education in liver surgery. This aim has been well met, a number of innovative components have been developed. It can be noted that many of those are applicable also on other surgery and cancer care. The components are now planned for productification within Sectra´s commercial offerings. Altogether, the project has had definite positive effects for Swedish competitiveness.

Expected results and effects

The results mainly consist of technology components. One target area was communication between surgeon and radiologist, where a patient-centric chat function was developed with the images of the case file being directly available. In 3D visualization, a number of functions for efficient handling of liver cases have been developed, one example is 3D annotations such as arrows and text. A substantial part of the project concerned so called lesion tracking, where the surgeon easily can navigate the images based on identified tumor metasteses and compare between time points.

Planned approach and implementation

The setup of the project was an initial analysis to elicit clinical needs and prerequisites, followed by technical development and gathering of clinical feedback. An important platform was Sectra´s visualization table, which early on was installed at Karolinska Institute and was the base for repeated workshops. This way of using hands-on sessions with prototypes to discuss the innovations have been a very rewarding for the development work.