Liver

The liver has a segmental architecture, which is determined by its hierarchical organized blood vessel tree (Couinaud). In case malignant tumors are diagnosed, parts of a liver can be resected due to its regeneration capabilities. The boundaries of such parts must respect the segmental architecture and therefore the blood vessel tree. So a (semi-)automatical algorithm for liver-vessels segmentation in static 3-D ultrasound volumes was developed. This algorithm was extended to track liver vessel branches in 4-D (3-D + time) ultrasound volumes.

The image on the left shows a B-mode image volume with hepatic (blue) and portal (lilac) venous vessel branches as segmentation result.

The videos on the left show the tracking of a liver vessel bifurcation (green dot) and the visualization of liver vessels in 3-D and 4-D ultrasound volumes.

Redaktionell verantwortliche Person nach § 18 Abs. 2 MStV:
Prof. Dr. med. Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Martin Overhoff, 19.06.2014