Planning liver surgical resections is an extremely complex task. In this process, surgeons decide the trajectory separating the healthy part of the liver from the part that will be resected. Although liver resection has been practiced for decades, among surgerons, there is still no consensus on what a good resection is. An underlying problem contributing to this lack of consensus is the fact that there are no formal methods to specify and communicate resection plsns—clinicians often use subjective descriptions (written or oral) or hand-drawings.
In ALive, we believe that liver surgical practice needs computer-assisted tools allowing the surgeons to specify resection plans in a flexible way, thus accommodating different surgery planning techniques and cultures. We also believe that providing a way to represent resections in a formal way can contribute to a better evaluation and communication of resection plans.
What is ALive?
ALive is a research project funded by the IKTPluss program from The Research Council of Norway.
ALive aims to improve liver surgery practice by researching new methods for planning and visualization of liver resections. The project will work on two different areas:
- Generation Of resection plans using geometric modeling, AI and vasculature analysis.
- Formal representation and visualization of 3D resections in lower dimensions (2D).