Interventional navigation systems for treatment of unresectable liver tumor

Most patients with liver tumors are not candidates for surgical resection. A number of local treatment methods for unresectable liver tumors have recently received considerable interests. The major task of these procedures is accurate needle placement with the aim of complete tumor removal and minimal damage to surrounding normal liver parenchyma. In this article, we review the current status of interventional navigation system (INS) for treatment of unresectable liver tumors in terms of overall workflow, tracking systems, and research development. The conceptual design of INS consists of pre-operative and intra-operative modules. The tracking system falls into three types: optical, electromagnetic, and MR gradient based. The current INS, according to their image modalities, can be classified into four categories: MRI based, CT based, U/S based, and multimodalities based. The article also discusses the future research direction for enhanced performance of INS with real time imaging, high accuracy, high resolution, and friendly user-interface.