Flow visualization for interactive simulation of drugs injection during chemoembolization

Abstract

Chemoembolization is an important therapeutic procedure. A catheter was navigated to the artery that feeds the tumor, and chemotherapy drugs and embolus are injected directly into the tumor. There is a risk that embolus may lodge incorrectly and deprive normal tissue of its blood supply. This paper focuses on visualization of the flow particles in simulation of chemotherapy drugs injection for training of hand-eye coordination skills. We assume that the flow follows a defined path in the hepatic vascular system from the catheter tip. The vascular model is constructed using sweeping and blending operations. Quadrilaterals which are aligned to face the viewer are drawn for the trail of each particle. The quadrilateral in the trail is determined using bilinear interpolation. On simulated fluoroscopic image, the flow is rendered as overlaying and semitransparent quadrilaterals representing the particles' trails. This visualization model achieves a good visual approximation of the flow of particles inside the vessels under fluoroscopic imaging. © 2006 The authors. All rights reserved.