An Augmented Reality Application for the Radio Frequency Ablation of the Liver Tumors

Hepatic cancer is one of the most common solid cancers in the world. As surgery of hepatic cancer is seldom applicable, different solutions have been found to cure this disease. One of these is Liver Radiofrequency Ablation. This technique consists in a needle insertion inside the liver parenchyma in order to reach the tumor and in an injection of a radiofrequency current to cause tumor cell necrosis for hyperthermia. The needle placement task is really difficult because surgeon uses ultrasound, CT or MRI two-dimensional image to guide the needle. In this paper we present an Augmented Reality system to help the surgeon to place the needle as best as possible; the application can also help the surgeon during the preoperative planning because it offers various visualization modality of 3D models of the patient’s organs obtained from the medical images