Impact of model-based risk analyses for liver surgery planning

The success of an oncological resection of the liver depends, among other factors, on the width of safety margins around tumors. Therefore, methods for determination of optimal safety margin are described in literature. These methods visualize the surgical risk for a specific saftey margin based on a geometric model of the liver. To prove whether and how these methods facilitate the process of liver surgery planning, an explorative user study with 10 liver experts was conducted in this work. The purpose was to compare and analyze their decision making. The results of the study show that model-based risk analysis enhances the awareness of surgical risk in the planning stage. Participants preferred smaller resection volumes and agreed more on the safety margins width in case the risk analysis was available. In addition, time to complete the planning task and confidence of participants was not increased when using the risk analysis. This work shows that the applied model-b ased risk analysis may influence important planning decisions in liver surgery. It lays a basis for further clinical evaluations and points out important fields for future research