Fig 1.
Postmortem CT slice through the liver. The arrows indicate the site of the biopsies on the left and right site of the falciform ligament.
Table 1.
Basic characteristics of the 40 included cadavers (median, interquartile range IQR).
Fig 2.
Axial slice of the non contrast-enhanced postmortem CT scan, through the liver of a 54 year old woman who died of natural cardiac cause. CT attenuation values and collagen and fat content on the right parafissural side (green arrow) were 39 HU, 1.17% and 0.51% respectively, compared to 64 HU, 0.68% and 0.53% on the left side (white arrow).
Table 2.
Cases with a pseudolesion on the non-contrast-enhanced postmortem CT on the right side of the falciform ligament.
Fig 3.
Axial slice of the non-contrast-enhanced postmortem CT scan, through the liver of a deceased 32 year old female (case B) who died of drug intoxication. The right parafissural side (green arrow) shows a pseudolesion with low attenuation compared to the left parafissural side (white arrow) The purple arrow indicates a paraumbilical vein.
Fig 4.
Histological section (Fig 4A) and 3D model (Fig 4B) of the human embryonic liver aged 34 days. The open purple arrow indicates the involuting right umbilical vein; the solid purple arrow the left umbilical vein. The black dotted line marks the connection of the ventral side of the liver to the ventral body wall, which hardly changes over time and becomes a thin structure (falciform ligament) as the volume of the liver increases about 40-fold between 5 and 8 weeks of development. GB—Gallbladder, ST—Stomach, PS—Portal sinus. Color code: blue—Inferior caval vein, light blue—Portal vein, grey—Gastro-intestinal tract.
Fig 5.
Caudal (Fig 5A) and ventral (Fig 5B) view on 3D reconstructions of a contrast-enhanced CT of an adult liver (in transparent brown). The pseudolesion on the right parafissural side is indicated in green (green arrow). The purple arrow indicates a paraumbilical vein of Sappey, which lies in the falciform ligament. GB—Gallbladder, in dark green. PS—Portal sinus, in light blue. Inferior caval vein, in dark blue.