Development of a research interface for image guided intervention: initial application to epilepsy neurosurgery

This paper describes the development and application of methods to integrate research image analysis methods and software with a commercial image guided surgery navigation system (the BrainLAB VectorVision Cranial System.) The integration was achieved using a custom designed client/server architecture termed VectorVision Link (VV Link) which extends functionality from the Visualization Toolkit. VV Link enables bi-directional data transfer such as image data sets, visualizations and tool positions in real time. The system was tested in both laboratory experiments and in real epilepsy neurosurgeries with highly promising results