3D SURFACE RENDERING OF IMAGES FROM MULTIPLE MR PULSE SEQUENCES IN THE PREOPERATIVE EVALUATION OF HEPATIC-LESIONS

Purpose: To develop a method for making three-dimensional (3D) reconst ructions of liver vessels and hepatic lesions from different MR data s ets. Material and Methods: To reduce the time required for segmentatio n and reconstructions, we used T1, T2 and phase contrast angiography, optimised for liver, lesion and vessels respectively. Following segmen tation and reconstruction, the different volumes were combined on the same workstation and presented to the surgeon. Results and Conclusion: Segmentation and reconstruction took 1-2 h. To be able to combine the volumes from the different data sets, certain criteria had to be fulf illed: a) the held of view had to be constant; b) the same volume had to be scanned every time which meant that the slice thickness and the number of slices could be adjusted as long as the volume covered was t he same; and c) the positioning of each volume had to be identical bet ween every scan. The resulting 3D reconstruction gave the surgeon a cl ear appreciation of the different lesions and their relation to the di fferent liver segments in the pre-operative planning of hepatic resect ions.