Computer-aided hepatic tumour ablation: requirements and preliminary results

Surgical resection of hepatic tumours is not always possible, since it depends on different factors, among which their location inside the liver functional segments. Alternative techniques consist in local use of chemical or physical agents to destroy the tumour. Radio frequency and cryosurgical ablations are examples of such alternative techniques that may be performed percutaneously. This requires a precise localisation of the tumour placement during ablation. Computer-assisted surgery tools may be used in conjunction with these new ablation techniques to improve the therapeutic efficiency, whilst they benefit from minimal invasiveness. This paper introduces the principles of a system for computer-assisted hepatic tumour ablation and describes preliminary experiments focusing on data registration evaluation. To keep close to conventional protocols, we consider registration of pre-operative CT or MRI data to intra-operative echographic data.