Computer-Assisted Hepatocellular Carcinoma Ablation Planning Based on 3-D Ultrasound Imaging.

To evaluate computer-assisted hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ablation planning based on 3-D ultrasound, 3-D ultrasound images of 60 HCC lesions from 58 patients were obtained and transferred to a research toolkit. Compared with virtual manual ablation planning (MAP), virtual computer-assisted ablation planning (CAP) consumed less time and needle insertion numbers and exhibited a higher rate of complete tumor coverage and lower rate of critical structure injury. In MAP, junior operators used less time, but had more critical structure injury than senior operators. For large lesions, CAP performed better than MAP. For lesions near critical structures, CAP resulted in better outcomes than MAP. Compared with MAP, CAP based on 3-D ultrasound imaging was more effective and achieved a higher rate of complete tumor coverage and a lower rate of critical structure injury; it is especially useful for junior operators and with large lesions, and lesions near critical structures.