Research and Implement of 3D Interactive Surface Cutting Based on the Visualization Toolkit

Surgical simulation increasingly appears to be an essential aspect of tomorrow's surgery. In this paper we present a preliminary work on virtual reality applied to liver surgery. The area of the liver, intra-hepatic arteries, veins, the portal vein and tumor have been extracted based on the seeded region growing algorithm. Then a realistic three-dimensional image was created, including the liver and the four internal vessels. After that, a user graphical interface was designed to interactively adjust the surgical resection planes. The surgical simulation platform was developed by providing a 3D visualization and virtual cutting system of liver based on personal computer. Our preliminary result shows that the visualization of liver and internal vessels and interactive modifications of the resection plane could present with a vivid profile.