The accurate surgical margin before surgery for malignant musculoskeletal tumors: a retrospective study.

There is no accurate volume measurement method for evaluating the response to chemotherapy in malignant musculoskelal tumors, and there is no specific preoperative evaluation method to evaluate surgical margins. Twenty-five cases of malignant musculoskeletal tumors treated from Mar 2012 to Mar 2014 were analyzed. Through the use of a connective slice-scan and augmented virtual reality technique, accurate measurement of the tumor volume and determination of surgical margins according to the standard proposed by Kawaguchi were easily reached. Specimens were sent for a pathological examination to determine the tumor type. The preoperative surgical margin was compared with the postoperative surgical margin. Curative resection or wide resection facilitated by the preoperative imaging data occurred in 92% of patients; only one case resulted in intralesional resection for malignant tumor progression, and one case resulted in marginal resection for femoral nerve invasion. There was no significant difference between the predicted margin before the operation and final margin after the operation (P>0.05). Our results demonstrate that application of continuous imaging data with enough sectional anatomy detail can provide a scientific basis for measuring the size of a tumor and identifying the tumor's surgical margins in multiple dimensions using an augmented virtual reality technique.