Computer-assisted planning for percutaneous ethanol injection of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Percutaneous ethanol injection of hepatocellular carcinoma is indicated for the treatment of small tumours superimposed on liver cirrhosis. It involves destroying the cancer cells of the liver by injecting ethanol using a needle placed in the centre of the tumour under ultrasound or computed tomography scanner. A precise pre-operative planning of such intervention is a major challenge for a successful intervention. It requires an accurate estimation of the injected dose and the three-dimensional tumour centre location. In this work, we propose a computer-assisted pre-operative planning based on a three-dimensional reconstruction of all involved anatomical structures in order to avoid damaging surrounding healthy tissues, dangerous probe trajectories and under-treatment of the tumour. This system consists of two main modules : A decision support module that helps physicians to make a percutaneous treatment decision and a therapeutic support one that deals with needle guidance planning once percutaneous treatment is chosen. The proposed system was evaluated on two clinical data sets and has led to promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]