A Novel Method for Observing Tumor Margin in Hepatoblastoma Based on Microstructure 3D Reconstruction

Objective We investigated three-dimensional (3 D) reconstruction for the assessment of the tumor margin microstructure of hepatoblastoma (HB).Methods:Eleven surgical resections of childhood hepatoblastomas obtained between September 2018 and December 2019 were formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded, serially sectioned at 4 mu m, stained with hematoxylin and eosin (every 19th and 20th section stained with alpha-fetoprotein and glypican 3), and the digital images of all sections were acquired at 100x followed by image registration using the B-spline based method with modified residual complexity. Reconstruction was performed using 3 D Slicer software.Results:The reconstructed orthogonal 3 D images clearly presented the internal microstructure of the tumor margin. The rendered 3 D image could be rotated at any angle.Conclusions:Microstructure 3 D reconstruction is feasible for observing the pathological structure of the HB tumor margin.