Abstract
BACKGROUND: Based on a surgical navigation system, image-guided surgery has been widely performed in neurosurgery. A surgical navigation system dynamically presents the positions of the surgical tools on reference images, which are usually generated from MRI images taken before the surgery. Although the organs are deformed by the operative procedure during the surgery, the reference images in the surgical navigation system cannot represent the organ deformation caused by the operative procedures during surgery. Therefore, the reliability of the reference images in the navigation system decreases as the surgical procedure progresses. METHODS: To solve this problem, we introduced a new concept of surgical navigation system which processes information interactively between the real and the virtual space, namely, updating preoperative images using the positional information of surgical tools. RESULTS: To estimate the resected regions, our proposed system utilizes the positional information of the surgical tools that can be tracked by a surgical navigation system. The system provides surgeons 3D virtual images closer to the real surgical field. CONCLUSIONS: This helps surgeons to understand 3D surgical anatomy in real time during surgery. SECONDARY CATEGORY: n/a.