VR-planSys: towards a viable 3D surgical planning system for treating lung cancer

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Surgical removal of lung cancer is the treatment of choice. Detailed anatomic information, acquired via surgical planning by reading computed tomographic (CT) images, is crucial to precisely determine whether a cancer lesion is removable and how a surgical procedure preserves maximal lung function. Modern multi-slice CT scanners have severely taxed the surgeon's ability to handle all information - imagine the workload of reading about 800 CT images of a lung cavity and mapping anatomic structures from them onto the actual lung cavity in three dimensions! The current clinical practice is to compress multiple high-resolution CT images (typically 0.6 mm thickness) into one standard CT image of 2.5 - 5.0 mm thickness. This compression results in the loss of detailed and valuable information and, in principle, should be used for better patient care. Surgical planning based on standard CT images also causes about 10% of patients undergoing invasive procedures only to discover that their lung cancer is not removable. Based on advanced virtual reality (VR) technologies, our long-term objective is to create VR-planSys - the world's first 3D VR surgical planning system for treating lung cancer. To fit into an office, VR-planSys will be a self-contained desktop VR system and generate 3D stereoscopic displays of lung cavities from high-resolution CT images. Underpinning VR-planSys will be advanced haptics (simulating the sense of touch) to enhance intuitive interaction with the 3D displays. Our short-term objectives are to develop: (a) viable segmentation algorithms to automatically extract all anatomic structures from high-resolution CT images of lung cavities; and (b) intuitive human-computer interfaces to correctly integrate visual and haptic information without perceptual illusions. Our feasibility work confirms that VR-planSys is achievable using current technologies and knowledge. The initial results demonstrate that viewing 3D displays of lung cavities has significant advantages over reading standard CT images for surgical planning. VR-planSys will improve patient care; facilitate the development of new surgical procedures; and bridge VR-based surgical planning and simulation for treating other diseases.