ABSTRACT
Neurosurgery has changed more than most other surgical specialties over the past 30 years. The most fundamental change has been in the availability of new diagnostic techniques, with the advent of computed tomography (CT) scanning in the 1970s and of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the 1980s. For the first time, the brain and spinal cord could be visualized directly. More recently, functional imaging with positron-emission tomography (PET), single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have allowed direct examination of brain metabolism.
