Development of intra-operative ultrasound navigation system for laparoscopic liver surgery

In laparoscopic liver surgery, laparoscopic ultrasound (LUS) is indispensable to understand inner structure such as vessels and tumors. However, LUS is not convenient due to poor operability, and does not provide positional information in the endoscopic view. To address the issue, we have developed both a robotic hand for LUS and a 3D visualization software. In this study, we describe the software which provide 3D ultrasound by scanning LUS. To confirm the system feasibility, an experiment using a polyurethane liver phantom was conducted. Figure shows the reconstructed volume with vessels. The computational time was approximately 50 msec less than typical imaging period of ultrasound.