Kick-off Meeting of the Eurostars iVisc Project in Bremen on 5 May, 2011

Intraoperative use of liver surgical planning data in the operating room of the Asklepios Clinic, Hamburg-Barmbek.
© Fraunhofer MEVIS
In particular, this work builds upon the achievements of the BMBF-funded FUSION project. Through close collaboration with surgical partners at the Inselspital Bern and the Asklepios Klinik Hamburg Barmbek, the project will concentrate on developing clinically relevant solutions.

During surgical liver tumor removal, identifying critical anatomical structures is complicated by the deformation of the organ.

To support intraoperative orientation, the EU-sponsored iVisc project will realize a system for integrated planning and intraoperative instrument guidance for open liver surgery.

Just as current GPS units reliably indicate the location of an automobile on an electronic street map, this system will track the real-time position of surgical instruments relative to anatomical structures that have been identified during operational planning, thereby increasing the safety and accuracy of the surgical intervention.

Through this project, the iVisc partners in Germany (Fraunhofer MEVIS and MeVis Medical Solutions AG) and Switzerland (ARTORG, University of Bern, and CAScination AG) continue a long-standing cooperation in the field of computer-aided liver surgery.