ABSTRACT
Recent technologic advances have initiated an ongoing revolution in surgical navigation (1-3). Digital tomographic imaging modalities produce three-dimensional mosaics of patient data that are exquisite in sensitivity and detail and can be used as spatially accurate maps of patients’ anatomy. Novel methods of registering, or mapping, these image data sets onto patient anatomy as it exists in physical space have made stereotaxy frames obsolete for this purpose. Interactive localization devices have provided a means of three-dimensionally digitizing the surgical workspace, relating the imaging data sets and the patients’ anatomy to surgeons and their instruments. Computers enable us to manipulate enormous volumes of information and display this information in a visually compelling and clinically meaningful manner. The incorporation of real-time intraoperative data into our calculations is rapidly expanding. Further advances in visualization and robotics promise to further transform the neurosurgical process in our lifetimes. These technologic developments are sufficiently profound so that clinical optimism about what is possible to accomplish via neurosurgical intervention has reached new heights.
