Planning of living donor liver transplantations based on MRI and CT data: Comparison of liver volume, portal and hepatic veins and their territories

Surgery planning of living donor liver transplantations is usually performed on the basis of preoperative CT imaging. To evaluate the performance of radiation-free MRI to serve as the sole imaging modality for donor evaluation and risk analysis of different resection strategies, we have analyzed CT and MRI data of potential donors. New methods for the analysis of MRI data have been developed and used for a first comparison of the liver volume, the portal and hepatic veins and the vascular territories with those extracted and computed from CT data of the same patient. The results of the first 13 pairs of datasets showed that the difference in liver volume is about 6%, the level of hierarchy for portal and hepatic veins extracted from MRI data is comparable to that from CT data while the differences between the territories are less than 1.5% of liver volume. Regarding the portal and hepatic vein, our study shows that the results of MRI are sufficient for the planning of l iving donor liver transplantations.